92 University Geological Survey of Kansas. 
jacent limestone. This is well illustrated in many places in 
southeast Kansas where flint-bearing limestones have been 
dissolved by surface action setting free the included flint 
nodules. Usually they are more or less fractured, it being 
the exception rather than the rule that a concretion two 
inches in diameter is set free without having itself broken 
into two or more fragments. The gravel beds so common 
over the entire southeast part of the state have been formed 
by the accumulation of flint nodules thus set free, and 
fragments are vastly more abundant than pieces which are 
unbroken. If large and small flint masses embedded in lime- 
stone are so fractured in the Coal Measures of Kansas where 
earth movements have been so limited, what might we ex- 
pect from areas where earth movements have been sufficient 
to produce the great number of large fissues and faults of 
the Ozark area? The excessive abundance of flint, therefore, 
certainly has had much to do with the fissuring of the min- 
ing region. 
It can hardly be supposed that the thin veneering of strati- 
fied rocks overlying deeper-seated crystallines has had much 
of an influence in weakening the outer part of the earth so 
that elevations or depressions could be produced. But it 
seems reasonable to suppose that when the Ozark elevation 
was brought about, and the surface stretching of strata re- 
sulting therefrom, then the stratified rocks would yield where 
weakest, and would be weakest where most fractured, and 
would be most fractured where flint beds exist most abun- 
dantly. In this way many fissures even scores of feet in 
width may have been produced by a certain slipping of one 
stratum upon another, or one formation upon another, due to 
the stress placed upon them. ‘There is little evidence, there- 
fore, that such fissures have any considerable depth. Ver- 
tical displacements, of course, unless confined entirely to 
the stratified veneering, must have been produced by move- 
ments in the deeper lying massive rock. Slight displace- 
ments of ten, twenty or even fifty feet may have resulted 
from uneven decrease in thickness of strata due to solution 
processes, as already explained. It is possible, therefore, to 
explain the greater proportion of fracturing and faulting of 
