HAWORTH AND BENNETT.|] Several Stratigraphy. 665 
THE IOLA DEEP WELL was finally carried to a depth of 3434 feet, at 
which depth is was abandoned about the first of October, 1908. This 
makes it the deepest well in the Mississippi valley west of St. Louis, and 
accordingly a correspondingly great interest attaches to it. The top of 
the Mississippian limestone was reached, in round numbers, at a thousand 
feet, making a full 2400 feet below this well-known horizon. The drill 
cuttings show positively that no massive rocks were found throughout the 
entire depth and that the drilling stopped still within the stratified rocks. 
The last thousand feet is nearly the same, being a very ferruginous sand- 
rock with pebbles here and there through it in places large enough almost 
to warrant the use of the term conglomerate. The proportion of iron 
‘seemed to increase with the depth, and that from the very bottom had so . 
‘much dark iron oxide in it that the whole mass was dark chocolate brown 
in color, but still composed of rounded sand grains coated with the iron 
oxide. | 
This well has an important bearing on the somewhat doubtful record 
of a deep well at Paola drilled years ago, supposedly to a depth of about 
2500 feet. It was reported that granite was struck in this well at about 
2250 feet. As the top of the Mississippian was reached at 1038 feet, this 
‘would give a total thickness of the stratified rock below this point of from 
1200 to 1250 feet. Paola is a little less than sixty miles northeast of 
Iola. One can hardly believe the Paleozoic stratified rock beneath the top, 
of the Mississippian would increase so much in so short a distance. There- 
fore, the Iola well casts considerable doubt upon the correctness of the 
report of massive rocks being found at Paola at a point less than 2300 
‘feet beneath the surface. It is also reported that a deep well at Carthage, 
Mo., passed entirely through the stratified rocks and reached granite at 
a depth of about 2200 feet. This report is not negatived by the Iola well, 
because the latter has only gone a little over 200 feet below where we 
would expect to find the granite according to the Carthage well. We can 
understand how that the stratified rock may have increased as much as 
‘234 feet in the distance between Carthage and Iola, and yet there is no 
more reason for suspecting such an increase than there would be to sus- 
pect a corresponding decrease. EH 
