260 
PROCEEDINGS OP THE ACADEMY OP 
Oae of the sketches of a long lanceolate leaf, like some of the existing species 
of Salix, sent by us to Prof. Heer, was drawn from a specimen collected, from 
one of the lower sandstones here. 
Aejain at another locality on the Missouri, about thirty miles above the mouth 
of Big Sioux river, No. 1, was seen by one of us (Dr. 11.) only five feet above 
the water's edge, and immediately overlaid by No. 2, of the Nebraska section, con- 
taining its characteristic species of Ammonites ; and directly over the latter, he 
saw No. 3, containing Inoceramus Prohlematicus. * At this locality he also 
found in No. 1 some of the same fossil leaves characterizing it at the other 
places already mentioned. 
On ascending the Missouri, above the last named locality, formations No. 2, 
3, 4 and 5 are seen to sink at the same gradual uniform rate of dip, in regular 
succession, beneath the level of the Missouri ; so that on reaching Heart river, 
we find the top of No. 5 nearly down on a level with the water's edge, and a 
short distance above that locality it passes out of sight, to be succeeded by the 
Gceat Tertiary Lignite basin of the upper Missouri, which overlaps it on the 
hills along the river for some distance below. 
From the foregoing statement, we think it will be clearly understood, that 
formation No. 1 of the Nebraska section holds a position beneath the other 
cretaceous deposits of that region ; while the occurrence in it of highly organiz- 
ed angiosperm dicotyledonous plants proves that it cannot be older than Cre- 
taceous. It may be argued, however, that it may in part be Cretaceous and 
part Tertiary, or at any rate that some of these leaves may have been obtained 
from overlying Tertiary beds which we have confounded with the Cretaceous 
below. This, however, is impossible, simply because specimens of nearly all the 
species found at the varions localities, have been quarried from the same bed at 
Blackbird Hill, and the whole, not a part only of this formation, passes beneath 
all the other Cretaceous rocks of the north west. In addition to this, we hare 
extensive collections of plants from the Tertiary of Nebraska, not a single species 
of which is identical with those from No. 1. 
When we stated in some of our papers that it was possible we might have 
included in this formation beds not belonging to the Cretaceous, it was not be- 
cause we thought any part of it might be Tertiary, but because we suspected 
some of the lower beds referred to it in Kansas might possibly be Jurassic ; and 
we are even now prepared to believe it may yet be found to repose on Jurassic 
rocks in that Territory, as it does at the Black Hills. 
Descriptions op new Carboniferous Fossils. 
The carboniferous species described in the following pages of this paper, were 
collected by us in Kansas, from the upper coal measures, extending up to the 
base of the Permian, through a series of strata holding a higher stratigraphical 
position than most of the coal deposits of the west. We found this series of 
rocks abounding, at places, in organic remains, mostly of the same species oc- 
curring in the coal measures of Missouri, along with a few others approxima- 
ting to Permian forms. 
Amongst our collections from these rocks we have identified most of the car- 
boniferous species figured by Prof. Marcou in his work on the geology of North 
America, which represents a group of fossils characteristic of our western coal 
measures. We had hoped to have ready for this paper some remarks on ihe 
upper carboniferous and Permian rocks of Kansas, illustrated by many local 
sections, showing the range of the various fossils, but we have, for want of time, 
been compelled to defer these for another occasion. 
Fdsulina cylindrica, Fischer. 
In our collections from the upper members of the Coal Measures of Kansas, we 
have great numbers of FusuUna, many of which agree so very nearly with figures 
* It is of course unnecessary for us to inform geological readers that a rock overlaid by strata 
containing Ammonites and Inoceramus^ cannot be Tertiary, because these genera became extinct 
at the dawn of the Tertiary epoch. 
[Dec. 
