INTRODUCTION 807 



in Crittenden and Caldwell counties in Kentucky which Engelmann had 

 identified as Chester Bed number 8 of his classification of the Chester in 

 Johnson County, Illinois. Weller contended that this sandstone is of 

 Pottsville age and not Chester at all, a view in which he could not be 

 shaken until in 1915, when through his own investigations he finally 

 satisfied himself that it lies in the lower half of the Chester group. 



In 1863 Engelmann applied the name Cypress sandstone to his Chester 

 Bed number 8, and, as stated, he identified number 8 in the bluff just 

 below Eosiclare. In 1905 I resurrected this name — Cypress — and, start- 

 ing with the bluff section at Eosiclare, applied it on the south side of the 

 Ohio, consistently and without a single serious error, across the exceed- 

 ingly faulted area comprised in the Kentucky counties of Livingston, 

 Crittenden, Caldwell, and Christian. I did not know that Engelmann 

 had been in error in determining the sandstone capping the bluff below 

 Eosiclare as the same bed that he had called Cypress sandstone in John- 

 son County. Indeed, there was no valid reason to doubt Engelmann's 

 determination, and consequently none also concerning the sandstone 

 mapped in Kentucky under the name Cypress until 1915, when Butts 

 found that the great sandstone bluff along the Ohio in Pope County, 

 Illinois, is in fact composed of three parts, namely, a lower sandstone 

 which is the same as the one in Downey's Bluff at Eosiclare, an upper 

 sandstone, now known to correspond to the true Cypress sandstone of 

 Johnson County, and between the two sandstones an important, but here 

 thin, shale formation. 



Although the discovery of these relations at once invalidated my 1905 

 usage of the term Cypress, I do not admit that it corrected any grievous 

 error on my part. I had no reason to doubt, and therefore accepted, 

 Engelmann's identification of the Cypress sandstone at Eosiclare as cor- 

 rect. Besides, Engelmann, also Worthen, had regarded the Chester Bed 

 number 8 — in other words, the Cypress sandstone — as corresponding to 

 the Ferruginous sandstone, or, as now known, the Aux Vases sandstone, 

 of the Mississippi Valley. I, too, had studied the section in the Missis- 

 sippi Valley and, basing my conception of the Cypress on what I saw in 

 the bluff at Eosiclare, I agreed with Engelmann and Worthen, and ac- 

 cordingly recognized Cypress as the oldest of the geographic names and 

 placed the terms Ferruginous and Aux Vases as synonyms under it. 

 Had I, like Engelmann, confused or combined the two sandstones in 

 Kentucky, I would feel more culpable. But I did not, and the error into 

 which I fell in this case is a nomenclatural one almost solely. It does 

 not affect the sequence of formations in Kentucky; we merely transfer 

 the name to a higher sandstone and either use Aux Vases for the lower 



