28 
Some Geological Problems — Calvin . 
hook group, including the yellow sandstone at Burlington, at 
the base of the Sub-carboniferous. The conclusions of Meek 
and Worthen are justified by the total absence of Devonian 
species from the beds of the Kinderhook. Even such wide¬ 
spread Devonian genera as Atrypa, Strophodonta, Acervularia 
etc., are conspiciously absent. On the other hand the crinoids 
and fishes, as well as the Productidse among the brachiopods, all 
impart to the Kinderhook fauna an unmistakable Carboniferous 
facies . 
Dr. C. A. White follows Meek and Worthen in referring the 
sandstones at Burlington to the Carboniferous instead of the 
Devonian.* Without quoting authorities farther it may be as¬ 
sumed that all competent geologists are now in accord as to the 
correctness of the position in the geological series that later 
and more careful study has assigned to these sandstones. 
Up to the present time no one so far as I know has called in 
question the propriety of assigning the yellow sandstones above 
the mouth of Pine creek in Muscatine county to the same 
horizon as the yellow sandstones at Burlington. Hall’s state¬ 
ment as to their equivalency has been accepted as final, and 
when the sandstones of Burlington were transferred from the 
Chemung period to the Sub-carboniferous, by common consent 
the spirifer-bearing sandstones of Muscatine county were sup¬ 
posed to be similarly transferred. White speaks of the Kinder¬ 
hook beds as striking the Mississippi river an Muscatine,f S. A. 
Miller refers Spirifera capax% Hall to the Kinderhook group. 
Hall in a recent publication§ speaks of S. capax as from the 
“Lower Carboniferous, mouth of Pine creek, Iowa.” Calvin in¬ 
fluenced by the general concurrence of opinion states that “the 
Kinderhook is seen resting on the Hamilton in Muscatine 
county.” || Other writers, similarly influenced have been led to 
support the view that the sandstones at Burlington and the 
sandstones near the mouth of Pine creek belong essentially to 
the same geological horizon. 
* White’s Geology of Lowa, 1870, vol. i, p. 189. 
f White’s Geology of Iowa, 1870, vol. i, p. 189. 
j American Palaeozoic Fossils, 8. A. Miller, 1887, p. 129. 
§Report of State Geologist for the year 1882, Albany, N. Y., Plate 52,. 
figs. 15,16, and description of plate. 
(JNotes on the Geological Formations of Iowa, p. 7. Prepared for distri¬ 
bution at the World’s Industrial Exposition at New Orleans, 1885. 
