PROSSER. | The Upper Permian. 67 
WELLINGTON. 
It will be, perhaps, a somewhat difficult matter to draw a line of 
separation sufficiently sharp for the purposes of areal geology be- 
tween the Marion formation and the overlying gray, reddish and 
greenish argillaceous shales. However, the two negative characters, 
absence of fossils together with the general absence of limestones, 
may serve as a means of identifying the formation. It is probable 
that careful search will eventually reveal a few fossils, the number 
probably always remaining small, in some part of these shales. On 
the lithologic side, though the formation contains some calcareous 
layers and a larger amount of red shales, perhaps Professor Cragin’s 
characterization of these rocks as “essentially a thick body of blue- 
gray and slate-colored shales”! will serve as a satisfactory descrip- 
tion of the formation. Professor Cragin has proposed the name 
Wellington shales* for the above formation, upon which is located 
the city of W ellineton, the county seat of Sumner county. In Saline 
county there are probably 200 feet of the Wellington shales,° but 
in the southern part of the state they attain a thickness of more than 
twice that amount. The greatest reported thickness of these shales 
is in the well section at Caldwell in the southwestern part of Sum- 
ner county, which according to Professor Cragin is 445 feet;* while 
in the Anthony well in Harper county, twenty tive miles northwest 
of Caldwell, a mass of blue shales, referred to the Wellington by 
Professor Cragin, has a thickness of 395 feet... The author first 
studied the upper part of this Kansas Permian in Marion county 
where these shales are much thinner, and in the description of that 
part of the state included them in the Marion formation.® However 
after studying them as exposed in their typical region in Sumner 
county, the writer is inclined to follow Professor Cragin and assign 
to them the rank of a formation. | 
In Saline county the base of the Cretaceous, which is the Kiowa 
shales, Mentor beds, or Dakota sandstone, rests on the Wellington 
1 EF. W. Cragin, Colorado College Studies, Vol. VI, p. 17. 
2 Ibid., Vol. VI, pp. 3 and 16. 
3 Professor Cragin gives 255 feet for the Wellington beneath Ellsworth, in the 
first county west of Saline (Gbid., Vol. VI, p. 16). 
ADUDI Cle WViOlLemVAL, nDeeLo. 
5 University Geological Survey of Kansas, Vol. I, pl. XXI. FEF. W. Cragin, Colo- 
rado College Studies, Vol. VI, p. 17. 
6 Journal Geology, Vol. III, p. 786 and 797. 
