172 
The American Geologist. 
March, 1896 
in this area of very marked folding there is another example 
of great thickness of strata, just as in the Appalachians. 
Assumming, as is now believed, that the Coal Measures and 
Lower Carboniferous limestones were deposited entirely over 
the area occupied by the present Ozark dome, which is of very 
recent origin, the enormous thickness ascribed to the more 
southerly Carboniferous rocks is as yet devoid of adequate 
explanation, as is also the derivation of so vast accumulation 
of sediments over one part of the area, while in so short a 
distance to the north the beds of the same age are relatively 
so thin. Branner,* however, has put forth the suggestion of 
an old continental mass extending through northern Louisiana, 
but having been base-leveled, was subsequently buried by the 
soft Cretaceous and Tertiary elastics. 
Bearing directly upon the question of the thickness of the 
Paleozoic strata in the upper Mississippi basin and of the 
Ozark uplift and furnishing some of the most important in¬ 
formation yet obtained, are certain deep borings which have 
recently been put down at various points in Missouri. Atten¬ 
tion \ has already been called to these. One at Sullivan in 
Franklin county, which was begun below the horizon of the 
Trenton limestone passed through about 1,100 feet of the 
magnesian limestones and sandstones before entering the 
granite.. Another, at Carthage in Jasper county, was started 
at about the base of the Coal Measures and encountered the 
crystalline basal complex at 2,000. feet. The most noteworthy 
of all, however, is a diamond drill hole sunk near Kansas 
City, a location that is not far from the thickest portion of 
the basin of the Western Interior coal field. The top of the 
well is a little above the base of the upper Coal Measures. 
The core at the bottom is 1J inches in diameter. The last 
thirty feet are reported to be in the rock, which examination 
shows to be a black mica schist, the cleavage planes of which 
have a dip of 35 degrees. If the natural inferences are cor¬ 
rect the entire Paleozoic sequence from the base of the upper 
Coal Measures has been passed through in a vertical distance 
of less than half a mile; the schistose floor of the unaltered 
sedimentaries has been reached in Missouri; and Archean 
* Arkansas Geol. Sm\, Ann. Rept. 1890, vol. iii, p. 283, 1892. 
^Missouri Geol. Sur., vol. vi, p. 330, 1894; also ibid., vol. vni, p. 334, 
1895. 
