SOME GEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF SOUTHERN KANSAS. 679 



that region which show that it is a field of rich prorpise for the naturalist, as the 

 Easterly portions are also for the agricultural and industrial immigrant. 



The region between Newton and Wellington is for the most part destitute 

 of solid rock ; along the railroad quite so, though a few thin beds of crumbling 

 shales are exposed in some of the railroad cuttings. At Wellington, and for sev- 

 eral miles westward, the streams and draws make their way through a variety of 

 loose shales, the darker of which are locally known as "slates," a misnomer 

 from which the stream that flows by Wellington has derived the name of Slate 

 Creek. As no fossils were found in the country rock of this region, we can only 

 judge of its geological age by its relation to the neighboring formations, and its 

 close repetition of conditions found in northern Kansas. According to these, it 

 would belong to the .permo-carboniferous 



At Wellington, however, occurs a local deposit of sand and gravel which 

 affords, as shown by its fossils, a glimpse of quite recent conditions. The mater- 

 ial of this deposit shows the oblique lamination characteristic of rapid and shift- 

 ing currents. The occurrence in it of numerous unworn fragments of the same 

 argillaceous and calcareous shales that outcrop in the neighboring ravines, to- 

 gether with the gravels of the region immediately northward and westward, show 

 that it isTnore recent than the general country rock of that region ; and the con- 

 tained - fossils {Bison latifrons.^ Mastodon, Elephas, etc.,) clearly refer it to the 

 champlain. 



The further occurence in it of beds of recent fresh-water shells taken in 

 connection with the evidences of torrential currents, show that we once had here 

 a rapidly flowing river. Several of the highly inclined wedge-shaped strata of 

 this deposit, though of so recent origin, have been converted into solid sand- 

 stone, but the exposure of this sandstone indicates hardly more than a dozen or 

 twenty cubic feet. There occur also here, as in the creek-bed adjoining, curious 

 thin concavo-convex concretions of clayey limestone,* whose form, except for the 

 lack of sutures, often reminds one of the occipital or parietal bone of a human 

 skull. These have perhaps been caused, as is the opinion of Judge Simmons, of 

 Wellington, by the efforts of gases to escape through the strata while the latter 

 were yet in the condition of half-hardened mud. 



Westward of the Wellington shales, the country rock is a rusty-brown sand- 

 stone. This sandstone is quite similar to that of the Dakota belt which enters 

 the State on the north in Washington County, and, though the single fossil, 

 Gryphea Fitcheri, which I have thus far found in it, is insufficient to determine its 

 exact age, the "ironstones " in which it abounds, taken in connection with the 

 known geographical distribution of the Dakota and absence of Jura-trias north- 

 ward, leaves little doubt that it belongs to the Dakota, and as such we shall here 

 consider it. On this view, the Dakota member of the Cretaceous in Kansas ex- 

 tends in a belt one or two counties in width from Washington County southwest- 



'■■ In several instances I obsereved large Irregularly rounded lumps of red clay in this 

 Champlain deposit. If I remember correctly, Judge Simmons has spoken to me of finding sim- 

 ilar lumps equal in bulk to an ordinary barrel. These are, of course not boulder clay; but I am 

 unable to account for them at present. 



