142 The American Geologist. September, 1005 
NOTES ON THE PERMIAN FORMATIONS OF KANSAS. 
By Charles S. Pbosser. Columbus, Ohio. 
In 1902 the writer reviewed the recent literature re- 
garding the correlation of the upper Paleozoic of Kansas 
with the Russian Permian.* In this review the writer in- 
advertently omitted reference to the papers of Dr. E. H. 
Sellards identifying and describing Permian plants from 
Kansas, although he was familiar with them. In 1900 Dr. 
Sellards reported the identification of Callipteris conferta 
Sterng. from the Marion formation (or possibly the lower 
part of the Wellington shales) of Dickinson county in 
eastern central Kansas and the geological importance of 
this discovery was discussed as follows by him : 
"The geological range of Callipteris conferta has an interesting 
bearing on the question of the age of the uppermost Paleozoic 
rocks of Kansas. The species is characteristic of the middle and 
lower Rothliegenden of Europe, but has not been found above the 
middle of the Permian. It has also been found in the Permo-carboni- 
ferous of West Virginia. The occurrence of this species near the 
top of the Kansas strata [in Dickinson county only the Big Blue 
series or lower Permian occurs; the Cimarron series or upper Per- 
mian is found farther south] together with Sphenophyllum, a genus 
that has not been discovered above the middle of the Permian, 
makes it improbable that the Kansas beds are younger than middle 
Permian. While, on the, other hand, the presence of Callipteris, a 
Permian genus, and the number and variety of plants belonging to 
the Tseniopteroid group, as well as the general character of the 
flora, tends to confirm the Permian age of the Kansas Upper Pale- 
ozoic"! 
In 1900 fossil plants were found in the Smoky Hill 
river valley just east of Salina in Saline county, which ad- 
joins Dickinson county on the west, in rocks of about the 
same age as those of -the former locality. In commenting 
upon the plants from both of these localities Dr. Sellards 
said : 
"There are, in the collections so far made, some twenty-six or 
twenty-seven determinable species, distributed in fourteen genera. 
The plants indicate unmistakably the true Permian age of the 
formation in which they are found. Many of the species are charac- 
teristically Permian, and only a very small proportion of the species 
identical with Upper Carboniferous species."* 
* Jour. Geol., vol. x, pp. 721-737. 
t Bull. Univ. Kansas, vol. i, No. 2 (Kan. Univ. Quarterly, vol. ix, 
No. 1), p. 64. 
* Trans. Kansas Acad. Sci.. vol. xvii, 1901, p. 209. 
