CHAPTER I. 



PALEONTOLOGY. 



DESCRIPTION OF NEW SPECIES OF ORGANIC REMAINS. 



During the progress of the Geological Survey of the State, many 

 new and interesting fossil forms have been discovered, which, with 

 those previously in the possession of the members of the geological 

 corps, of new and undescribed genera and species would, were they all 

 described and figured, make an extensive and valuable addition to the 

 science of Palaeontology. A few only of those most characteristic or 

 remarkable, for the present publication, have been selected. They form 

 but a small part of those deemed worthy of being carefully studied 

 and described. 



The < sub-carboniferous limestone, the Coal Measures, and the tran- 

 sition beds of intercalated limestone near the base of the millstone 

 grit, of western Kentucky, abounds in fossils of remarkable and beau- 

 tiful forms. The living inhabitants and the dead individuals of those 

 ancient seas, both contributed, with the wasted materials of the subja- 

 cent lands, to the formation of the sedimentary strata then in process 

 of deposition which now serve as a guide to the student of Stratigraph- 

 ical Geology, pointing out with certainty the period and geological po- 

 sition of rocky beds wherever found, and with great certainty indicat- 

 ing equivalent geological measures, which, but for these truthful histo- 

 ries of the past, would never be recognized as of the same age — one 

 district presenting rocky masses, which in another are entirely changed 

 in physical appearance and chemical composition. 



In Crittenden county the sandstone of the millstone grit and asso- 

 ciated limestones have a great thickness downward, from the produc- 

 tive Coal Measures, to the principal mass of the sub-carboniferous lime- 

 stone on which it rests. 



At the distance of two hundred feet above the base of this mass of 

 sandstone is to be found a bed of earthy, calcareous, and shaley mate- 

 rials, one hundred and fifty feet thick. The lowest sixty feet of this 

 intercalated bed, is of a drab color, filled, with innumerable fragments of 



