368 I'he A}iieric(in (ieolixjlaf. UoccihIkt, 15«95 
(No. 3 of Prc.r. IJilTs Black Hills section). This consists of 
2iiore constantly arenaceous and consolidated sediments. It is 
named from one of the localities of its outcrop, the head of 
what may be called Sfo/res <lrau\' ^vhich proceeds from the foot 
-of Stokes Hill near and south of Lanphier draw. At one of 
the most interesting of the Chej^enne sandstone localities on 
South Elk creek, where also the Lanphier beds present one of 
their most remarkable phases, the sandstone of the Stokes ho- 
rizon, like that of part of the Corral horizon at the same lo- 
cality, is brilliantly colored, scarlet and other shades of red. 
THE CHAMPION SHELL-BED. 
Capping the Cheyenne sandstone at Belvidere, its upper 
surface constituting a somewhat uneven floor beneath the 
Wafer-shale, by whose ready recession it is sometimes de- 
nuded, forming local platforms at the foot of the latter's out- 
crop, is a thin stratum of gray shell-conglomerate in which 
the prevailing fossil is the little Gnjpha'a hilll of the north 
Texas Fredericksburg. This is the C/iampio)> s/) ell-bed., so 
named from the fact that it has nowhere 3'^ielded so great a 
variety of fossils as along the branches of what may be called 
the Champion drair. The latter is a hitherto unnamed arroyo 
of the Medicine Lodge river, that crosses the A. T. & S. F. 
railway at Belvidere a few rods west of the depot and a short 
distance below a house biiilt and formerly occupied by Mr. H. 
B. Champion, to whom the w^'iter is indebted for accommoda- 
tion on some of his earlier excursions to this interesting dis- 
trict. 
In the Belvidere district proper the Champion shell-bed is 
remarkably persistent, though commonly less than a foot and 
rarely more than a foot and a half in thickness. Sometimes 
the bed consists almost wholly of shells cemented into rock by 
means of arenaceous limestone and calcite, again of a matrix 
of sand and clay mingled in varying proportion, containing 
few or many fossils and more or less impregnated with iron- 
oxide and cai-bonate and sulphate of lime. 
Generally the fossils of the Champion shell-bed are fairly 
well preserved, but where the impregnation with iron and 
gypsum is excessive they are sometimes so decomposed as to 
be scarcely recognizable. In some localities the Gnjphaa hilli 
is the only fossil found; but generallv it is associated with a 
