cp’ 
(2 University of Kansas Geological Survey. 
~~) 
b 
have any considerable amount of the cementing material. Such an 
occurrence of water within the well cemented mortar beds is 
entirely unknown so far as our investigations have resulted. Thou-— 
sands of wells have been examined which found the water in the 
loose sand or gravel, but no one is known to the writer in which 
water was obtained directly from the cemented masses. This is as 
it should be. The drying up of the water carrying the acid calcium 
carbonate could not occur here, and therefore the cement would 
rot be deposited. 
It is recognized that this explanation for the time and manner of 
formation of the cementing material in the mortar beds of the great 
west has an important bearing upon a number of subjects cou-. 
nected with Tertiary stratigraphy. If correct it lays aside the some- 
what laborious task, attemped by different geologists, of explaining 
how fresh water lakes, under which such material was supposed 
to have been deposited, could have become sufficiently charged with 
calcium carbonate in solution to produce the cementing material 
upon proper desiccation. It obviates the difficulty of assuming that | 
the desiccation of those lakes was possible at a time while the in- 
coming waters were sufficiently rapid to carry the gravel and coarse 
sand of the mortar beds, an assumption that no one has yet been able 
to make appear reasonable. It leaves untouched the question of the 
mode of formation of the beds of sand and gravel. No matter 
whether they are fluviatile or lacustrine in origin it provides a 
cementing material for such beds after they were formed. 
It also provides an explanation for some apparent perplexities of 
local stratigraphic conditions. Ona hillside at the present time the 
water will penetrate to a depth of from 2 to 4 feet below the surface 
during a heavy rain. The evaporation destroys the moisture, leay- 
ing the cementing material only a short distance below the surface. 
By a repetition of this process there may often be deposited at about 
the same distance below the surface a layer of the white, chalky 
calcium carbonate from 1 to 3 feet thick in a plane inclining with the 
surface of the hill. Many local instances were observed of an ap- 
parent inclination of strata which doubtless originated in this way. 
Plate XLIII is from a photograph of a hillside south of the Cimarron 
river just south of the Kansas state line. Here the sand has been 
