190 University of Kansas Geological Survey. 
Kansas” gave a second locality of molluscan fossils “in the western 
portion of Clay county,’ in addition to the one near Bavaria. 
CORRELATION. 
Professor Cragin has identified 25 species of marine mollusca 
from the Mentor beds and shown that part of them are identical 
with species that occur in the Denison beds and Kiowa shale of 
the Comanche series. The Professor’s conclusion as to their age is 
shown in the title of his article, viz., “The Mentor beds; a central 
Kansas terrane of the Comanche series.” This is also clearly ex- 
pressed at the conclusion of his discussion of their fauna where it 
is stated that the Mentor beds are “characterized by a fauna related 
to that of the Denison beds and still more closely to that of the 
Kiowa shales. ‘Their fauna is, in fact, especially related to that 
of the upper part of the latter.’ 
After examining a portion of the fossils collected at the locality 
four miles west of Smolan, Mr. T. W. Stanton of the U.S. Geological 
Survey wrote me as follows: “I have no doubt that Professor 
Cragin was right in referring this fauna to the Comanche series 
rather than to the Dakota. All of the Saline county marine beds 
that have furnished the supposed Dakota invertebrates apparently 
go together in the Comanche series and it may even be questioned 
whether the leaf-bearing beds of that region should not go with 
them since Mr. Hill and others have found ‘Dakota’ species of plants 
in the Cheyenne sandstone beneath invertebrates that belong to 
the Comanche fauna.”? The facts appear to strongly support the 
above conclusions and the writer fully agrees in referring the 
Mentor beds to the Comanche Cretaceous of the Lower Cretaceous. 
It is of interest in reference to the correlation of the Dakota to 
eail attention to the fact that Professor Cope has provisionally 
referred teeth found in the Kansas Dakota to Lepidotid fishes and 
stated that he has “never found Lepidotid fish remains in the 
Upper Cretaceous of North America, while they are characteristic- 
ally Lower Cretaceous and Jurassic in Europe.’”4 
1 First Biennial Report State Board Agriculture of Kansas, 2d ed., 1878, p. 67. 
2 American Geologist, Vol. XVI, Sept. 1895, p. 165. 
3 Letter of Nov. 24, 1896. 
4 Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phil., 1894, Pt. I, p. 65. See also the further statement 
in Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phil., 2d ser., vol. IX, pt. 4, 1895, p. 443. 
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