68 ENVIRONMENT OF VERTEBRATE LIFE, ETC. 



series give rise to two widely distinct varieties of both soil and topography. The 

 uppermost 400 feet of soft beds, with their included thin limestones, and limy, 

 red, yellow, and greenish shales, interstratified with two or three rather massive 

 sandstones, give origin to a beautiful rolling topography often finely adapted to 

 grazing and agriculture, especially where these beds cover the uplands not deeply 

 trenched by draining streams. When the hills are high and steep, however, the 

 red marly shales exhibit a great tendency to landslides, and hence, where such topog- 

 raphy abounds, grazing rather than agriculture should be the chief occupation for 

 these Conemaugh soils. 



'"A wide band of red marks the crop of this soft portion of the Conemaugh 

 entirely across the State from the Pennsylvania line on the north to the Big 

 Sandy River at the Kentucky boundary, 250 miles distant to the southwest.' 



"Likewise in volume ii (a), Supplementary Coal Report, West Virginia Geo- 

 logical Survey, published under date of September 15, 1908, on pages 622 to 624, 

 inclusive, the writer used the following language in describing the Conemaugh 

 series : 



'"Sediments inherently red make their appearance for the first time in this 

 series since the close of the Mississippian, with the top of the Mauch Chunk 

 Red Shale. True, a pink or reddish color in the ferriferous clays, or shales of the 

 upper portion of the Allegheny Series may sometimes be seen, as near Fort Gay, 

 on the Big Sandy, and near Coal Grove, above Ironton, Ohio, but these apparent 

 reds are from oxidation due to weathering, since these sediments were not red 

 when deposited, and if a bore-hole could be sunk through them a few feet in from 

 their crops no reds would appear. The genuine red beds of the Conemaugh were 

 deposited as red muds from an old eroded land surface and are inherently red, 

 whether at the surface or 1,500 feet below the same, as is the Pittsburgh red shale 

 in some portions of Wetzel, MonongaHa, and other counties in the center of the 

 Appalachian basin. 



"'The general statements on pages 165, 226, and 227, volume 11, about the 

 importance of the sudden appearance of red beds after their absence from the 

 strata for a long period of time, and the possibility that the lowest Conemaugh 

 reds might mark the dividing-line between important formations, such as the 

 true Coal Measures and the Permo-Carboniferous, has received strong confirma- 

 tion during the past year. Dr. Percy E. Raymond, of the Carnegie Museum, 

 has discovered in these red shales, near Pittsburgh, at 35 feet below the Ames 

 limestone, an interesting reptilian fauna which is closely related to Permian 

 types. This fauna, including species of the genera Eryops, Desmatodon, and 

 Naosaurus, allied closely to what have been regarded as Permian forms in Illinois 

 and Texas, has been recently figured and described by Professor E. C. Case, in 

 the Annals of the Carnegie Museum, volume iv, pages 234 to 241, April i, 1908. 

 It is quite possible that a considerable break in the geologic record occurs at the 

 close of the great sandstone epoch ending with the Saltsburg horizon just above 

 Bakerstown coal where the great invasion of red beds begins. Although there is 

 little or no unconformity in dip at this horizon, there may be a real unconformity 

 of considerable extent, since the variation in the thickness of the sandstone 

 deposits at the base of the Conemaugh is very great indeed. 



"'In connection with the consideration of these Permian land reptiles dis- 

 covered at Pitcairn, Pennsylvania, in the Pittsburgh red shales by Dr. Raymond, 

 it should be mentioned that in 1906 Mr. Ray V. Hennen, assistant geologist, 

 discovered what appears to be a perfect tibia of a large reptile allied to Pareiasau- 



