PROSSER. | Cretaceous.—The Dakota Sandstone. 187 
forms a ledge 15 feet thick on its western side. Some of the rock is 
really a grit containing numerous small quartz pebbles. The top 
of the mound is between 170 and 180 feet higher than the Mentor 
locality one mile to the northeast. There can be no question but 
that the sandstone on top of this mound is stratigraphically as 
high as the leaf-bearing Dakota sandstone, for three impressions 
of the Dakota fossil leaves were found in it. There is a beautiful 
view from its top—the Smoky Hill Buttes forming a conspicuous 
ridge to the southeast. A view of the western side of the ledge is 
given in the picture of the Dakota sandstone at top of Soldier Cap 
mound on Plate XXIV. 
In the northern part of Falun township between West Dry and 
Middle Dry creeks are two buttes, between which is the hamlet of 
Falun. The upper part of the buttes is composed of coarse brownish 
sandstone, while a well at the foot of the northeast mound shows 
rather coarse bluish and yellowish shales, apparently Wellington, 
containing gypsum. No Mentor fossils were found; but on the 
mound southwest of Falun at about 1400 feet A. T., the approxi- 
mate altitude of the Mentor fossils, four miles north on the northeast 
corner section 28, Washington township, parallel and netted-veined 
fossil leaves like the Dakota fossil plants were found. This locality 
is on the line between sections 9 and 16 of Falun township. On the 
mound, to the northeast of Falun, composed of dark-brownish coarse 
sandstone lke the Mentor, fragments of fossil plants were also 
found. There seems to be no doubt but that these fossil leaves are 
very near the bottom of the deposits usually termed the Dakota 
sandstone and also in about the same stratigraphic position as the 
Mentor fossils four and five miles to the north. 
Three miles directly east of Falun, on the southwest corner sec- 
tion 7, Smoky Hiil township,! Mentor fossils were found loose on 
the surface of the ground at an elevation of 1380 to 1390 feet A. T., 
and not far from that of the fossil plants on the butte southwest 
of Falun. A well near the base of the western slope of the Smoky 
Hill Buttes, at their northern end, shows bluish and yellowish ar- 
gillaceous shales with some of a reddish tint, and in some of the 
1 Called Smoky Hill township on the U. S. topographichal sheet, but Smoky View 
township on the Saline county map. 
