2^ 
ON A LEAF-BEARING TERRANE IN THE LOUP 
FORK. 
By F. W. Cragix, Topeka, Kansas. 
An interesting leaf-bearing teiTane occurs in the Loup Fork 
Tertiary, on branches of the North Canadian, or Beaver creek, in 
the "Public Lands." Its outcrops, so far as now known, are on 
the south side of the stream. The locality is near Alpine, and is, 
by wagon-road, between thirty-five and forty miles southwest of 
Englewood, Kansas, the nearest railroad point. It has been 
known to the writer as a leaf-bearing locality since the spring of 
1888, from an impression of a large Platanus leaf preserved on a 
block of fine, white, chalk-like rock and which was presented to 
him by Mr. Henry Fares, with the statement that the locality 
abounded in fossil leaves and that fish remains occurred in the 
same deposits. 
In texture, this rock resembles certain fine, white phases of the 
Niobrara chalk* of western Kansas, being quite free from the sand 
which, of a fine sort and in small proportion at least, is an almost 
invariable constituent of the lime-like variety of the Loup Fork 
rock known in western Kansas under the names of "native lime," 
"poor man's plaster,"* " gypsum," and "gyp." A sample sub- 
mitted to an eastern zoologist, for microscopical examination, was 
reported to contain " coccoliths and rhabdoliths. " This report 
was unfortunately incorrect ; but on the strength of it, the writer 
provisionally referred the leaf -bearing chalk-marl of Alpinef to the 
Niobrara Cretaceous, regarding it as an example of chalk formed 
near land, and hence probabl}' in water of moderate depth. 
In June 1890, the writer was for the first time able to visit the 
locality from which the leaf had been taken, and found that the 
supposed chalk was a lacustrine marl, yielding Flanorhis, Splice- 
riam, crushed specimens of an Anodonta or Unio, and the scales 
and spines of percoid fishes. 
The slopes of the Beaver, in the vicinity of Alpine, are formed 
chiefly of Tertiary deposits, immediately underlaid by gypsiferous 
red-beds, of supposed Triassic age, which crop out to the north- 
eastward in the Cottonwood canon and at the mouth of Crooked 
creek, and again to the westward and southwestward on the 
Beaver and on Clear creek, near Beaver City, the Clear creek 
*This name is applied also to massive gypsum in Barber county, Kan. 
fBulletin Washb. Coll. Lab. Nat. Hist., Vol. 2, p. 07. 
