464 LHaworth—Stratigraphy of the Kansas Coal Measures. 
Ratio of Limestone to Shales.—In the whole of the Coal 
Measures up to and ineluding the Cottonwood Falls limestone, 
there is about 544 feet of limestone, or a ratio of limestone to 
the total thickness of 1:5. In the lower Coal Measures there 
is only about 81 feet of limestone, or a ratio of 1:10, while in 
the upper Coal Measures there is about 460 feet of limestone, 
giving a ratio of 1:42. 
Conclusion.—A number of interesting points of a general 
character may be noted, some of which are brought out in the 
above brief descriptions, while others are well founded on data 
now being gathered together for publication in greater detail 
than is possible in an article of this character.* 
first. It may safely be said that the Coal Measure strata 
are in a general way conformable with the upper surface of 
the Mississippian floor. The almost uniform thickness of the 
Cherokee shales over such wide areas and the regularity of the 
succeeding formations indicate this. Nowhere is so great a 
difference known between the direction of the bedding planes of 
the Cherokee shales or the Oswego limestone and the floor surface 
as is to be found in connection with either the Thayer shales 
or the Lawrence shales, each of which is a wedge-shaped body. 
The dip of the succeeding strata in general is of the same 
kind. The Oswego limestone, from Oswego to Independence, 
a distance of thirty-two miles, dips fully 625 feet, or nearly 
twenty feet to the mile. The Iola limestone in the southern 
part of the state dips nearly as much, while from Kansas City 
to Lawrence and Topeka it dips a little over 10 feet to the 
mile. 
The nonconformity between the Coal Measures and the 
Mississippian floor is therefore local in character and princi- 
pally due to surface erosion rather than being widespread and 
general. Nonconformity has already been pointed out in 
Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa, but in every instance known to 
_ the writer the illustrations have covered but narrow distances, 
such as those mentioned in Cherokee county, Kansas, St. Louis 
and Keokuk. Few fields afford such excellent opportunity 
for studying this phase of stratigraphy as Kansas now does 
with her scores of deep wells almost all over all the Coal Measure 
area. | 
Second. It would seem there can be little question but that 
the different formations lie one above the other in regular 
order, similar to the order usually found to obtain in other parts 
of the geologic column and in other parts of the world. It is 
exceedingly probable that all of the Cherokee shales were 
formed before any part of the Oswego Hmestones, and that 
* Vol. i of the University Geological Survey of Kansas. 
