192 University of Kansas Geological Survey. 
Kansas belongs in the Lower instead of the Upper Cretaceous is also 
supported by the fact that Professor Knowlton of the U. S. Geologi- 
cal Survey has identified from the Cheyenne sandstone of Stokes 
Hill, near Belvidere, three species as identical with lower Dakota 
plants of Saline county. The locality for one of these, Rhus Uddem 
Lx., is given as “from the west slope of the Smoky Hill Buttes, near 
Salemsburg post-office’ which indicates that its horizon is below 
or near that of the Mentor shells to the west of the Smoky Hill 
Buttes as well as in the same general part of the terrane as the 
buttes near Falun where fossil leaves were found, and the Mentor 
fossil shells four miles west of Smolan. The other two species, Sas- 
safras mudget Lx. and NS. cretacewm var. obtusum Lx. came from the 
bluffs along the Saline river, the locality that has already been con- 
sidered as near the horizon of the Mentor shells in the western part 
of Cambria township.! Professor Knowlton evidently recognized 
that perhaps these species belonged in strata older than those 
containing the greater part of the Dakota flora, for he said: “If 
more were known of the chronologic sequence of the Dakota flora, 
it would possibly be found that the plants identified above belonged 
to lower or older beds.” 
Prof. Lester F. Ward has recently shown from a study of fossil 
plants that the lower part of the so-called “Dakota Group” of the 
Black Hills in South Dakota belongs in the Lower Cretaceous, and 
he expressed this opinion: “It would seem probable that a consider- 
able portion of the deposits underlying the marine Cretaceous of the 
Rocky mountain region which have heretofore been referred to the 
Dakota Group on purely stratigraphical evidence may really be 
much older.’ 
When examining the upper Permian and Lower Cretaceous 
of Saline county it was not practicable to study the exposures of the 
middle and upper Dakota. The writer is not able to say whether 
the coarse brownish sandstone forming the upper part of Soldier 
Cap Mound and the Smoky Hill Buttes belongs in the Upper Creta- 
ceous or not. Inthe diagrammatic sections this sandstone has been 
1 American Journal Science, 3d Series, Vol. L, pp. 212, 213. 
2 Ibid., p. 214. 
3 Journal Geology, Vol. II, May, ’94, p. 268. 
