682 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



great Arkansas, with whose turbid flood their clear and sparkling waters are in 

 marked contrast. 



West of the Wellington shales, native trees soon disappear and we see noth- 

 ing worthy the name of a tree of spontaneous growth, save one lone cottonwood 

 and a small clump of woods in a ravine far north of the " trail," until we reach 

 the valley of the Medicine River. Here and thoughout the great canon system 

 tributary to this river, we find the ravines uniformly, if not heavily, timbered. 

 Now almost wholly composed of deciduous trees, the timber in these ravines once 

 embraced many red cedars. Especially did these thrive upon the slopes of the 

 ravines and the faces of the bluffs, and many of them were of great size. They 

 were cut down by the early settlers, many of whom would have starved to death, 

 but for the friendly presence of the cedars and the buffalo bones, which it is said, 

 they hauled to Hutchinson and sold. The deciduous trees include much the same 

 species as occur in eastern Kansas, but less of cottonwood, while elm is particu- 

 larly abundant. 



Next month we shall give some account of the great gypsum deposit of the 

 Dakota or Benton, which lies in Barber and Comanche Counties and which 

 gives to Kansas another and very prominent " gypsiferous horizon " which has 

 hitherto escaped the attention of our geologists; together with a brief notice of 

 the great "Salt Well" of Ford County, notes on some striking relief-features of 

 southern Kansas, and notes on its palaeontology and natural history. 



\To be Co?itinued.'\ 



MINERAL BELTS OF THE CONTINENT. 



PROF. J. VAN CLEVE PHILLIP.-;. 



Take one of our numerous continental railroad maps that shows the topog- 

 raphy of the mountain system of Sierra Nevada, Sierra Madre and the basin be- 

 tween them, and draw a blue line from Alaska along the great watershed of the , 

 Rocky Mountains to San Luis Potosi in Old Mexico, and another line to follow 

 the Sierra Nevada from Van Couver's Island to Zacatecas. Make these lines 

 one- half inch wide with a camel's hair pencil. In the State of Zacatecas these 

 mountains come together, and going south separate and form the vein of the 

 basin in which the city of Mexico is located. Going farther south these water- 

 sheds again come together in the State of Ozaca, where silver and gold mines 

 are found. The mountain range then narrows and runs single through Central 

 America and the Isthmus of Panama. 



The eastern belt crosses the Rio Grande where that river bends north and 

 forms the Santa Rosa Mountain Range in the State of Coahuilla, Along this 

 range a silver vein can be traced for loo miles, and anthracite coal follqws the 

 silver half a mile distant to the east. What are known as the Santa Rosa silver 

 mines are in this belt. 



