STRATIGRAPHICAL REPORT. 



51 



the Green River group. The deposits are very different in character from 

 those further to the north. As stated, the beds along the Union Pacific Rail- 

 road are shaly, contain many seams of coal and rich beds of fish, leaves, and 

 palms. Passing south the coal-measures disappear, the shale becomes less 

 marked and sandstone more abundant, until, as at Haystack, not a particle of 

 shale is to be seen. In this connection two facts are worthy of notice. Close to 

 the road leading from Leclede to Black Buttes Station, and scarce three miles 

 from the former, is a most remarkable butte of Green River rocks. Its 

 measured height is 338 feet ; its sides are entirely without any land of vegeta- 

 tion and marked with 48 bands of brilliantly colored shale. Beginning at 

 bottom the order of the beds and colors is dark Indian-red shale, blue slate- 

 color, Indian red, neutral tint, Indian red, purple, and brown shale containing 

 seams of selenite, soft brown sandstone ; then purple, yellow, gray, Indian-red 

 shale, and so on to the top. The blue slate-color, neutral tint, and purple 

 proved on examination to be differences produced by weathering. The beds of 

 shale were clearly alike in material, and diminished in thickness as the summit 

 was approached. Thus the lowest of the purple bands measured 18 feet; the 

 next of the same color, 14 feet; the next, 10 feet; the next, 12 feet; the next, 9; 

 while the topmost one was but 2 feet thick. Nothing like this was seen until 

 the members of the party reached Twin Buttes. At this place, thirty miles 

 south of Bryan Station on the Union Pacific Railroad, and fully eighty miles 

 southwest of Leclede, a series of shale-beds, precisely similar in color and order 

 of the colors, was seen. They were in the Bad Lands at the north end of the 

 butte.' 



Section number 2 was taken five miles north of number 3, at a place singu- 

 larly rich in fossil remains. All the strata shown in the profile lay beneath the 

 surrounding plain, and therefore under the beds of Haystack Mountain, which 

 was not more than a mile distant. They have accordingly been numbered on 

 the drawing from the bottom to the top of the profile. Those of number i, 

 which is a section through the plain and the mountain, have been numbered in 

 like manner. So that where the two are joined, a continuous section is afforded 

 from the highest point on Haystack to the lowest exposure in the Bad Lands at 

 its foot, a vertical distance of 700 feet. 



I. A bed of hard, fine-grained, light green sandstone weathering to a pale 

 pink. The thickness was 27 feet. 



II. Over this was 24.5 feet of very soft sandstone containing a great deal of 

 fine clay. The color was a pale green, and at distances of from five to seven 



' This butte on Major Powell's map of " Green River," is called Cameo Mountain. On Mr. King's 

 map it is put down as Twin Buttes, 



