232 R. T. Hill—Outlying Areas of the Comanche 
The white sands between the Red Beds and Washita fauna are 
lithologically somewhat different from the Cheyenne sand- 
stones, but it is an interesting fact hitherto unpublished, that 
they contain dicotyledonous leaves of at least one species iden- 
tical with those of the Cheyenne sandstone, the Sterculea 
Snowit of Lesquereux. This specimen was collected by the 
State Geological Survey, and erroneously described,* as Prot. 
F. H. Knowlton has shown,t+ as a new species under the name 
Sterculea drakei Cummins. It was also erroneously pub- 
lished,t as having come “From the upper sandstone of the 
Tucumeari beds four miles west of Tucumcari Mountain, New 
Mexico, above the bed of blue clay, ‘bed F’ of Marcou’s sec- 
tion.”§ Mr. N. F. Drake in a recent letter to Mr. J. A. Taff,| 
as announced by the latter before the Geological Society of 
Washington, April, 1895, stated that he collected this particu- 
lar specimen, and that it came from the basal sandstone below 
the molluscan-bearing beds and not from the Dakota above it. 
It is the writer’s opinion that when these basal beds are fully 
studied, they may be found to represent the initiatory sedi- 
ments of the Comanche sea upon the Red Beds in this region, 
like the Trinity sand of Central Texas, the Antlers sands of 
Southern Indian Territory, and the Cheyenne sandstone of 
Kansas, all members of the great initiatory littoral formation, 
marking epochs in the migration of the sea which, during the 
Comanche epoch, transversed them diagonally northward across 
the Great Plains Region. : 
A comparison of the two sections at Tucumcari and Belvi- 
dere which the writer has personally studied, reveal some com- 
mon interesting general features. Both localities show topo- 
graphic similarity in that they are remnantal buttes in the 
margins of the Plains. The summits of both sections are the 
mortar-bed-like rocks of the Tertiary Plains formation resting, 
through unconformity by erosion, on a sandstone of supposed 
Dakota age. Beneath this alleged Dakota sandstone in each 
locality are clay shales with marine fossils of the Washita 
division; below these molluscan-bearing shales are sands con- 
taming the dicotyledonous Sterculea Snowii Lesquereux, while 
the base of each is the Red Beds. . | 
The observable differences between the Belvidere and Tucum- 
cari localities are as follows: G. dilatata occurs at the base 
of the Washita beds at Tucumeari, while at Belvidere it ranges 
near their summit. The Tucumeari fauna contains above the 
* Annual Report, Texas, State Geol. Survey, 1891, p. 210. 
+ American Journal of Geology, vol. ii, No. 4, p. 372. 
{ Geol. Survey of Texas, Third Annual Report, 1891, p. 210. 
: Ibid, p. 209. 
| We are indebted to Mr. J. A. Taff for permission to use this information. 
