680 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



ward to Rice, and thence slightly to the east of south, passing into the Indian 

 Territory mainly from Harper County. It has been shown by Mudge to send 

 an arm eastward, along the divide between the Kansas and Arkansas Rivers, to 

 the highlands of Morris County and another westward into Colorado along the 

 latter river, by whose ancient erosion it has been laid bare. In the southern 

 tier of counties, the most easterly exposure of it that I have been able to find is 

 at Milan, in the western part of Sumner County. It occurs also in the bed of 

 the Chikaskia River. Westwardly of this, it is the main country rock as far as the 

 Gypsum Hills (of which it forms the base) west of Medicine Lodge. It has also 

 been exposed by the erosion of the Medicine River and its tributaries at least as 

 far as eastern Comanche County and, near the southern State-line, by a more 

 extensive erosion, further westward, probably into southern Ford County. I 

 have reason to think that it will be ultimately found as far west .as the junction 

 of Crooked Creek with the Cimarron River. 



In travelling by carriage from Harper to Medicine Lodge, the streams are 

 found to be quite unlike those for which Kansas is so generally reputed. Instead 

 of the slow muddy creeks so largely characteristic of eastern Kansas, are seen 

 rapid brooks, — veritable brooks, with waters limpid as crystal, flowing often over 

 beds of quartz pebbles which, for variety and beauty of colors, would challenge 

 comparison with New England itself. The origin of these pebbles is not far to 

 seek. Capping a line of low bluffs of the Dakota sandstone (the first bluffs we 

 have met in travelling westward from Harper), which extends westward from a 

 point near the Harper-Balrbour' boundary westward, we shall find a bed of con- 

 glomerate, perhaps a foot thick, composed of these same colored pebbles, and 

 in the very act of liberating those pebbles by disintegration. This is certainly 

 the origin of a part, at least, of the pebbles, and is probably one of the persist- 

 ing members of the tertiary which formerly spread, apparently, over the entire 

 region in Kansas south of the Arkansas River and west of Sumner County, and 

 whose remnants, chiefly in the form of gravel and pebbles mingled with the 

 Dakota sand, may be found in Harper, Kingman, Reno, Pratt, Barber and 

 perhaps other counties. Near the junction of Kingman, Harper and Barber 

 Counties has been dug up, at a depth of something like twenty feet, the metatar- 

 sal of a Pliocene horse, indicating an animal of good size and with the peculiarity 

 of very unequal splints, a feature not known, I believe, in any Tertiary horse 

 prior to the finding of this specimen. This is undoubted evidence of Tertiary 

 for this region ; but it must be borne in mind that these Tertiary deposits 7?iay be 

 modified deposits, and if this is the case the conglomerate above mentioned may 

 belong to the Dakota, as indeed may be the case in either event, since such con- 

 glomerates occur in the Dakota elsewhere. 



The great mass of the Dakota sandstone is friable. It appears to be mainly 

 the lower beds that afford stone of sufficient durability for building purposes. In 

 the region about Harper there is a considerable quantity of stone that can be so 

 used; in the vicinity of Attica and Sharon a few thin layers; and from there west- 

 ward, generally, very little indeed. 



