176 A. Winchell on Geology of Petroleum in Canada West. 
As to the geological age of the strata where the tracks were 
found, we cannot speak with confidence, as we have found no 
fossils near the locality. A few miles distant we discovered im- 
pressions of exogenous leaves, which we suspected were in the 
same geological horizon as the footprints, but were unable at 
that time to verify it. Unfortunately the specimens were lost 
the next day, by the upsetting of our wagon in fording a swol- 
len stream. ut we are inclined to place the formation at 
least as high as the Lias. Future observations may fix it still 
higher. 
The Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous in this part of Kansas, 
are all represented by their deposits. Major F. Hawn (Rocks 
of Kansas, p. 4), makes the former 420 feet thick, which is more 
than exists in the vicinity under consideration. 
Quindaro, Wyandotte Co., Kansas, Dec. 21, 1865. 
Art. XXIII.— Note on the Geology of Petroleum in Canada West; 
: by Prof. A. WINCHELL. 
HavING just spent a week at Oil Springs and Petrolea, in the 
township of Enniskillen in Canada West, and having scrutinized 
the statements of well-borers in reference to more than one hun- 
dred wells, and examined many actual specimens brought up 
from various depths, I am prepared to offer a more definite 
statement than heretofore of the geological position of the accu 
mulations of oil in that region. : 
The surface materials at Oil Springs are from 38 to 72 feet n 
depth below Main street; at Petrolea, 7 miles north, about 66 
feet below the general level of the country; and at Wyoming, 5 
miles farther north, 120 feet deep. They consist of grayish or 
somewhat ferruginous clays, 10 to 14 feet deep, succeeded down- 
wards by tough, sometimes plastic, generally stratified, blue clay, 
with caleareous spar, pyrites, fossils of the Hamilton group an 
fragments of the same formation extending to the rock or withia 
afew inches of it. At the bottom is generally found, at Oil 
Springs, a bed of porous materials consisting of glacial boulders, 
fragments of Hamilton limestones, gravel, and in some cases flow- 
ing quicksand. oe 
The principal mass of rock beneath, to the Corniferous lime 
stone, consists of a series of argillaceous and caleareo-argilla- 
ceous shales; shaly, argillaceous, often, pyritous and eminenti7 
fossiliferous limestone; dark, or brown, dew crystalline, har = 
fossiliferous limestone, and rarely a bed of sacdeaoice: At the base 
is frequently found a buff-colored, granular, porous, magnesia® 
