INTRODUCTION 819 



recognized also in the underlying Fredonia limestone. Most of the re- 

 maining 38 of these 54 species that I have designated as common to the 

 Fredonia and the Upper Ohara are among the species that Weller found 

 and listed in the Shetlerville fauna but not in the Fredonia. 



Evidently I have been either more fortunate or more industrious in 

 my collecting of Sainte Genevieve and Gasper faunas. Whatever the 

 reason, Weller has no right to ignore the faunal part of the evidence on 

 which I based my conclusion that the Fredonia member of the Sainte 

 Genevieve is more closely allied to the Chester than to the underlying- 

 Saint Louis and Spergen formations of the Meramec group. In the face 

 of the opposing evidence cited by one who has collected or determined 

 more fossils from the concerned formations than Weller has, he most 

 certainly is not warranted in declaring, definitely and without qualifica- 

 tion of any kind, that "not a single member of the [Lower Ohara ; hence 

 inferentially also the preceding Fredonia] fauna is a distinctive Chester 

 type" — a sentence quoted from page 120 of his report on Hardin County. 

 Indeed, his own list of Shetlerville fossils on page 140 contradicts this 

 statement by showing that of 17 Shetlerville species that he recognizes 

 also in both the Renault and the Fredonia 6 have no known near relatives 

 in pre-Sainte Genevieve beds, 6 others are represented by close, though 

 distinguishable, relatives in the older formations, and 5 range from below 

 to above the Sainte Genevieve. The first 6 of these Fredonia species 

 therefore fulfill all the requirements of distinctive Chester types. 



Moreover, if Weller had compared his small Lower Ohara collection 

 (15 species) with fossils found in the Gasper limestone in Kentucky, as 

 listed by me in 1917, 11 he would have observed that at least 10 or 11 of 

 the 15 species occur also in that unquestioned Chester limestone. Of the 

 remaining 4 species the Platycrinus positively does range upward at least 

 into the Upper Ohara, whereas the Cypricardinia is of a type that might 

 he found in any Upper Mississippian oolite, and the two species of 

 Aclisina have no established stratigraphic significance. As might be ex- 

 pected, all of these Lower Ohara species except, perhaps, the Aclisinas 

 occur also in the Fredonia and most of them begin in the Spergen. How- 

 ever strictly compared and evaluated, the predominance of the affiliations 

 of this Lower Ohara faunule is Chesterian rather than Meramecian. 

 Obviously, too, it is but a very incomplete sample of the marine life of 

 its time. 



CHESTER TYPES IN THE FRED OX I A FAUX A 



A much better conception of the marine fauna of the pre-Upper Ohara 

 part of the Sainte Genevieve formation is to be obtained from my list of 



"Op. cit., pp. 149-152. 



