148 
STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY 
present them for the Urals. It so happens that the one person¬ 
age above all others who should know most of all its minutiae 
about the Permian sequence of faunas in Russia, Dr. Theodor 
Tschernyschew, once very thoroughly inspected the Kansas River 
section, going afoot all of the distance between Kansas City and 
Salina, and collected plentifully of the fossils from many horizons, 
especially representative suites from all the principal terranes. 
This was after the adjournment of the Fifth International Geologi¬ 
cal Congress which met in Washington, in 1891. Many of the 
localities particularly visited were on my suggestion after several 
long conversations on the subject. As paleontologist to the Mis¬ 
souri Geological Survey I was then fresh from that region. 
Later, after the long excursions of the Twelfth International 
Geological Congress, Dr. Tschernyschew renewed his acquaintance 
with the Kansas field on his way to the Grand Canyon. His 
stratigraphic determinations were essentially as given by me in 
1899, after I had gotten back from the Urals, where in company 
with Tschernyschew, Karpinsky, Stuckenberg, Nikitin, and 
Amalitzky, I had paid rather close attention to the details as well 
as general relations of the Kama River section of the original 
Permian. There was very close agreement of these independent 
results. 
In Kansas the lowest horizon which it was possible to class as 
Permian was the limestone afterwards widely known as the Wre- 
ford formation, a level situated far up in the column, nearly to 
the Red Beds. Aside from a thin section immediately beneath 
the Red Beds, called the Permo-Carboniferous in Russia, all be¬ 
low, the Wreford or Riley limestones down to the Plattsmouth 
limestone, was easily paralleled with the Russian Artinsk forma¬ 
tion, a characteristic Coal Measure deposit, or Pennsylvanian as 
some call it in this country. 
In view of these facts it seems to be a distinct advance in Amer¬ 
ican stratigraphy to regard the original Permian succession as a 
typical provincial series, as it in reality is, and to drop the term 
entirely as a title for American rocks. Revival of Marcou‘s 
70-year-old near-guess for the Grand Canyon at this late day is 
quite inopportune. Besides, we already have a very complete, 
exact and expressive provincial nomenclature for the American 
rocks in question, which, until something better, more illuminating, 
