386 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



GEOLOGY AND MINING. 



THE BURLINGTON GRAVEL BEDS. 



PROF. JOHN D. PARKER, U. S. A. 



During the summer of 1883, some students of the Kansas Agricultural Col- 

 lege, while on a geological excursion in Southern Kansas, found on Shell Island, 

 which is located a little below Burlington, a piece of Burlington gravel containing 

 a trilobite. The specimen is a cast, small but quite perfect, and is evidently in 

 situ, that is, it belongs to the gravel. This specimen was submitted to Prof. O. 

 St. John, the accomplished palaeontologist of the United States Survey, who 

 identified it as belonging to the genius Phillipsia, of the Upper Carboniferous. 

 This find is important, due to its bearing on the geological horizon of the Burling- 

 ton gravel beds. 



Prof. Schaeflfer, of Cornell University, found in the gravel, a specimen of 

 which was sent to him for examination, a large number of small silicified corals, 

 the two genera Fenestella and Tremotopora being readily distinguishable. These 

 genera belong to the Silurian. The late Prof. Mudge, who was probably more 

 familiar with Kansas geology than any other person, on a casual examination of 

 the Burlington beds in the fall of 1871, expressed the opinion that they were the 

 result of modified drift. The beds extend over a large territory passing over the 

 divide between the Neosho River and the Verdigris, and the gravel is found as 

 far north as Emporia, and as far south as Oswego. I have found the gravel in 

 walks at Topeka and Leavenworth. The Kansas River may have been the gen- 

 eral terminus of glacial action southward in the State of Kansas, but we find bould- 

 ers farther south, and possibly there might have been enough glacial action over 

 the region of the beds to have deposited them. Or, perhaps, the drift may have 

 been modified, and the beds transported to their present position by subsequent 

 agencies. 



Prof. O. St. John is of the opinion, however, that the beds are to be consid- 

 ered of local origin, and to have been derived from the Carboniferous. We give 

 the following extract from a private letter of this eminent palaeontologist, which 

 indicates his views on the subject : 



" In regard to the chert gravel from- the Neosho Valley near BurHngton,' 

 Kansas, it is perfectly safe to say it comes from the chert beds overlying the 

 heavy building limestone series, well up in the Upper Coal-Measure series; the 

 same that crowns the highland eminences south of Manhattan, and thence ex- 

 tending south-southwest into the so-called Flint Hills east of the Arkansas Valley, 

 in the southern central portion of the State. It may not be strictly a " glacial" 

 gravel, although these particular deposits might well have in part been the result 



