94 University Geological Survey of Kansas. 
on the railroad between Parsons and Cherryvale. As ex- 
plained above, he confounded these with the Mound Valley 
limestone, so that, so far as his writings are concerned, 
the name is equally applicable to each formation. As the 
name Mound Valley had already been used by this Survey 
it was retained with its original significance, and the term 
Dennis, out of courtesy to Adams, is now used for the upper 
one of the two to which he applied it. 
Thickness.—The Dennis limestone constitutes the upper- 
most member of the old “triple system” limestone of Bennett 
and the Erie limestone of Haworth and Kirk. Opposite Union- 
town it is fully 25 feet thick. Southward it gradually grows 
thinner to where it disappears along the Verdigris river. 
Northeastward it retains its thickness much better all the 
way to Kansas City, where it is about 10 feet thick in the 
bluffs along Turkey creek and at the Kansas river. 
Area.—The Dennis limestone is almost exactly coextensive 
with the Mound Valley already described. Its outcropping 
is a little to the west. It underlies the town of Cherryvale, 
where it is found about 5 or 6 feet beneath the surface. The 
same may be said of it at the railroad station Dennis. Farther 
northeast an escarpment gradually appears with the Dennis 
limestone capping it. This escarpment becomes quite noticea- 
ble between Erie and Shaw. To the northeast of this area 
from ten to fifteen miles its escarpment gradually grades into 
that capped by the Mound Valley limestone until they unite 
southwest of Uniontown, as already explained. 
Characteristics.—The Dennis limestone is practically iden- 
tical in physical properties with the Mound Valley and the 
Bethany Falls already described. In some places it produces 
a cross-bedded structure, perhaps more than either of the 
other two. Near its upper surface it is well filled with cherty 
concretionary masses of irregular shapes and sizes, these 
cherts being mainly blue at the north but light-colored at the 
south. Along the wagon roads east of Bronson, where water 
has liberated the chert nodules, they have accumulated on the 
surface in great abundance, the larger ones being used by the 
farmers to weight down fence-posts. Some of them reach a 
maximum size of three feet in diameter and 300 pounds or 
more in weight. As a result of this unusual amount of chert 
there is a tolerably well-formed gravel-bed here and there 
over the surface for many miles in a northeast-southwest di- 
