HAWORTH AND BENNETT.| General Stratigraphy. 719 
it must be worked out before the connection is positively es- 
tablished. 
To the north and northeast the Cherokee shales have been 
traced by the writers across into Missouri as far north as the 
north side of Bates county, and indirectly, by a careful study 
of well records which have been referred to us on different oc- 
casions by well-drillers, they have been traced as far northeast 
as the Missouri river. We may say, therefore, that from our 
own personal knowledge they extend northeastward to the Mis- 
souri river. Missouri geologists in various reports, and Iowa 
geologists in practically all reports published which bear on 
the subject, have shown conclusively that the same shale-beds 
extend northward from the Missouri river across the remain- 
der of Missouri and into the coal-fields of Iowa as far north as 
the Iowa coal-fields have been traced. This makes a continu- 
ous bed of Cherokee shales extending from the coal-fields of 
Arkansas south of the Arkansas river northward to the central 
portion of Iowa. 
Character.—In character the Cherokee shales vary materi- 
ally, both vertically and longitudinally. In color some of them 
are a light ashen gray, from which they pass by gradual stages 
into jet-black bituminous shales. In material they vary from 
the finest-grained clay shales into arenaceous shales and finally 
into sandstones. Much of the soil produced from them where 
they occupy the surface is light-ashen in color, due largely to a 
lack of organic matter in the shales themselves. Elsewhere the 
soil is a rich black on account of the amount of bituminous 
material in the shales. 
Limestone in the Cherokee Shales——In many places small 
and irregular lentilles of limestone are found within the shales, 
occasionally with a lateral extent of a number of miles. The 
most prominent of these is a limestone found a short distance 
below the surface at Cherokee, which is exposed along the up- 
per branches of Cherryvale creek northwest of Cherokee and 
again north of the Marmaton river near the east line of the 
state, where it appears at the surface and causes considerable 
annoyance to the farmers by its frequency in the fields. Here 
it breaks up into angular blocks, the so-called “diamond rock” 
of the farmer. 
In addition to this other small beds are noted, and partly 
irregularly shaped calcareous concretionary masses which are 
found with considerable frequency, and yet irregularly. Fig- 
