GRIMSLEY. | 5 Historical Resume. 45 
Report of Prosser. 
Professor Prosser deyoted much time to a study of the Upper 
Permian deposits of Kansas and has published the results of his 
investigations in Volume II of the Reports of this Survey.” He 
could find no break between the Wellington shales and the over- 
lying Red Beds, but there was a marked unconformity between 
the latter and the overlying Cretaceous or Tertiary. He provi- 
sionally assigns the Red Beds to the Permian and adopts Cragin’s 
name of the Cimarron series. 
On account of the difficulty in tracing the various subdi- 
visions of Cragin over any great distance only the prominent 
ones are retained, and he gives this classification : 
( Kiger formation. 
Upper Permian ? ~ Cimarron Series. Cave Creek gypsum. 
l Salt Fork formation. 
The Salt Fork formation includes the lower part of Cragin’s 
section mentioned above, namely: Harper sandstones, Salt 
Plains measures, Cedar Hills sandstone, and Flower Pot shales. 
The Cave Creek gypsum is the same as Cragin’s Cave Creek 
formation, and Kiger includes the formations above to the 
Comanche series. 
_Prosser reviews at some length the literature concerning the 
Red Beds, and states that as no fossils have been found to settle 
the age, the beds cannot be satisfactorily correlated with Trias 
or Permian. The Red Beds have been looked upon as a single 
formation ; but on account of the prominence of the Cave Creek 
gypsum in southern Kansas and Oklahoma it is regarded as en- 
titled to rank as a formation, and so is used to separate the 
lower or Salt Fork division from the upper or Kiger formation. 
Doctor Williston” regards the Red Beds as Triassic, and Mr. 
Vaughan,” of the U.S. Geological Survey, calls them Permo- 
Trias. 
26. ‘‘The Upper Permian,” Vol. II, University Geological Survey of Kansas, p. 75 and ff., 1897. 
27. Kans. Univ. Quart., Vol. VI, p. 56, Jan. 1897. [Recently Doctor Williston has obtained 
vertebrate fossils from the lower Red Beds in northern Oklahoma, near the Kansas line, which 
tend to make him look upon the Red Beds as being Permian. At this date he is still partially 
undecided, and therefore has not yet published his views on the subject. Personally he told the 
writer that the indications now favor the Permian age of the Red Beds.— E. H., Dec. 1898. | 
28. Science, N.S., Vol. V, p. 559, April 2, 1897. 
