Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. 203 



taining the Gryphcea Rcemeri of the Neocomian of Comet 

 Creek, is an entirely different species from the G. Tucumcarii, 

 it is a new species which I propose to call Gryphcea Kansana. 

 It possesses all the main characters common to all the Gryphcea 

 of the Neocomian or Lower Cretaceous of America and Europe. 

 As for Mr. Hill's announcement that " The nomenclature of 

 the Gryphseta oysters of the Comanche series will be thor- 

 oughly revised in a separate paper which the writer has in 

 print," almost two years have passed and the paper is not 

 yet distributed. I hope that it will soon be out; and then, I 

 shall publish figures and description of the large Gryphcea 

 Kansana, n. sp. Messrs. Hill and Stanton do not seem to 

 realize that if their identification of the Gryphseas at Belvi- 

 dere and at the Tucumcarii region were correct, their discovery 

 of one above another at one place and the reverse at the other 

 place, in the same geological basin, among almost horizontal 

 strata, would go far towards destroying the paleontological 

 character for classification of strata, discovered almost one cen- 

 tury ago, by William Smith, the author of " Strata identified by 

 Organized Fossils" (4to, London, 1816). Happily their identi- 

 fication of the Gryphcea Tucumcarii with the G. Kansana is 

 incorrect and their classification is based on paleontological mis- 

 rule. There seems to be a sort of fatality, after the numerous 

 false identification of half a dozen and probably more different 

 species of Gryphcea, with the G. Pitcheri, to have now the 

 same difficulty of incorrect identification of two distinct 

 species of Gryphcea. It is discouraging in the extreme to see 

 such a succession of blunders during more than forty years. 



Now a few words on the age and classification of the Belvi- 

 dere section and other outcrops in Kansas. 



Professor Chas. S. Prosser gives a very good account of the 

 strata, under consideration, in vol. ii of the Kansas Geological 

 Survey, although he also falls into the error of calling the 

 new Gryphcea Kansana, of the top of the Belvidere section, 

 Gryphcea Tucumcarii. Above the New Red sandstone forma- 

 tion of the plains south of the Arkansas Piver, lies in dis- 

 cordance of stratification a sandstone, called by Professor 

 Cragin " the Cheyenne sandstone," of a thickness of about 50 

 to 60 feet. No characteristic fossils have yet been found in it. 

 In fact fossils are very rare, only a few shells referred with 

 doubt to Avicula and Cucullea having been found, and these 

 so poorly preserved that Mr. Stanton has declined " to identify 

 them even generically." In the upper part of the Cheyenne 

 sandstone, a small flora, eight species, has been determined by 

 Professor Knowlton, who says : " That up to the present time 

 the dicotyledons from the Cheyenne sandstone are not known 

 outside of the Dakota formation," that is to say the base of the 



