352 The American Geologist. May, 1897 
To what extent the classification given for the Cimarron rocks in Kan- 
pas, needs to be modified for adaptation to the Kansas-Oklahoma area as 
a whole, will appear in what follows. 
The Harper Beds and the Salt Plain Measures.— As surmised in 
•'The Permian System in Kansas," the horizon of the great salt spring 
at the head of Salt creek, in Blaine county, Oklahoma, belongs to the 
Salt Plain measures; but the observations made in the April recon- 
naissance show that the evidences of salinity are not confined to the 
Salt Plain measures but that the Harper beds are also distinctly palifer- 
ous. In the gently inclined plain drained by Salt and Kingfisher 
creeks, and reaching from the Cimarron river westward to the foot of 
the bluff-range of the Cave Creek gypsum, the outcrops of the Harper 
and Salt Plain formations constitute all of the pre-Neocene part of the 
surface, the Salt Plain beds forming a more westerly and upper zone of 
unknown width below the Flower pot body (and Cedar Hills base?) of 
the bluffs, and the Harper beds occupying a (presumed proportionally 
large) lower part of the valley and crossing the river to the eastward. 
The saline character of the Harper is manifested west of the river and 
of Dover by the frequent brackish and salt wells encountered. Thus, 
the diflBculty of drawing a line between the Harper and the Salt Plain 
is increased, and these should perhaps be considered as composing a 
single saliferous formation, for which, from its being traversed by King- 
fisher creek and having the town of Kingfisher within its area, the 
name of Kingfisher would be appropriate. But notwithstanding this 
difficulty, the Salt Plain measures force themselves upon us as a very 
pronounced, and, if mterwpted, j^ersistently recurring saline horizon. 
Reduced to subformational rank under Kingfisher, the Salt Plain 
measures would be, in a sense, its more important, though its thinner 
member, and genetically would represent the culminating time of con- 
ditions which were more or lees favorable to the deposition of salt dur- 
ing the entire Kingfisher epoch. The conditions are nearly parallel 
with those of the column represented by the gypseous Flower-pot shales 
and the thinner, massively gypsiferous Cave Creek beds above them, 
the Cave Creek representing the culmination of conditions only imper- 
fectly expressed in the Flower-pot shales, viz.. conditions favorable to 
chemical deposit (precipitation— in this case, of gypsum) as opposed to 
those favorable to mechanical deposit (sedimentation). This culminat- 
ing relation of the Cave Creek gypsum formation to the gypsum-sparred 
shales of the underlying Flower-pot, was one of the considerations that 
led me to place the former with the latter in the Salt Fork division, 
rather than alone or in the Kiger division. It will be seen further on 
that we have in the Dog Creek formation a third circle of precipitation, 
one of dolomite, and that this too has its preparatory and its culminat- 
ing stages. 
Because, from Kansas southward to the Stony hills of Blaine county, 
Oklahoma, and to an unknown distance beyond, the line between the 
Dog Creek and the higher formations is sufficiently well distinguished 
and the danger of confusing this formation with any other dolomite 
