58 RECONNAISSANCE IN NORTHERN ALASKA IN 1801. 



vician fossils have been found by the Survey party on Seward Peninsula." and Lower 

 Silurian forms* were also found by Mr. A. J. Collier during the season of 1901 

 in the same region. 



Silurian fossils are also reported to have been collected'' by Buckland, Dall. and 

 others at Cape Lisburne and the adjacent Cape Thompson, but, so far as known to 

 the writer, no section or description of the rocks is given. In Dana's Manual of 

 Geology it is stated that species of LitJwstrotion. have been found in the Arctic coast 

 lands between Cape Lisburne and Kotzebue Sound. Lower Silurian fossils were 

 collected by Mr. Schuchert on the northeast coast of the continent, in Baffin Land. 



Correlation. — -From the schistose, crystalline, and micaceous character of the 

 Skajit formation and its resemblance to similar rocks of the Bettles series,'' it is here 

 provisionally correlated with the schistose phase of the Bettles series occurring at 

 the head of Chandlar River, with which subsequent detailed work in the inter- 

 vening region may connect it. It seems probable that the limestone reported by 

 prospectors to occur in the gold placer district in the Koyukuk, between the Skajit 

 formation on John River and that on the Chandlar, represents this connection. In 

 an earlier report e the Bettles series was tentatively correlated with the Fortymile 

 series of Spurr. If, however, the Skajit formation proves to be Upper Silurian and 

 its correlation with the Bettles series is correct, the previous correlation of the 

 Bettles limestone to the north of the Yukon with the pre-Silurian Fortymile series 

 to the south, in the Fortyuiile district, may have to be abandoned. 



TOTSEN SERIES/ (SILUKIAN) . 



Clmracter and occurrence. — This series of rocks occupies a belt about 12 miles wide 

 on John River. It lies south of the Skajit formation, upon which the Totsen rocks 

 seem to rest unconformably, while they in turn are unconformably overlain by the 

 Bergman series on the south. The rocks are mainly mica-schists and quartz-mica- 

 schists, in both of which the essential minerals are biotite and quartz. There is also 

 some much-altered greenstone or amphibole-schist. Locally the mica-schist becomes 

 graphitic, graphite bodies one-eighth inch in diameter being noted, and in some cases 



"Brooks, A. H.; Richardson. G. B.: Collier, A. J., and Mendenhall, W. C, Reconnaissances in the Cape Nome and 

 Norton Bay Regions, Alaska: Special publication U. S. Geol. Survey, 1901. 



bGraptolites were found by Messrs. A. H. Brooks and L. M. Prindle along the northern base o£ the Alaskan Range in 

 the summer of 1902. 



c Correlation papers, Neocene: Bull. U. S. Geol. Survey No. 84, pp. 248-249. 



dSchrader, F. C, Reconnaissance along the Chandlar and Koyukuk rivers, Alaska: Twenty-first Ann. Rept. U. S 

 Geol. Survey, pt. 2, 1900. 



«lbid. 



/The name Totsen is derived from the term Totsenbetna — formerly applied by the natives to Wild Creek— by 

 dropping the final syllables, which signify river. On the map accompanying the writer's report on the expedition of 1S99, 

 and on that in Mendenhall's report of 1902 (Prof. Paper U. S. Geol. Survey No. 10), this name was erroneously applied to 

 the stream which is now called John River, but which Allen designated Fiekett's River. The word was spelled Totzen- 

 bitna by Allen. It is said to mean lune, the waterfowl. 



