CHAPTER III.-NATURAL HISTORY.

BY F. A. SAMPSON.

The Natural History of the County, including its Geological Formations; its Paleontology; its Conchology; its Botany, etc., etc., with Partial Lists of Distribution of Species. The general natural history of the county will necessarily be very incompletely written at this time. There are not yet within its limits specialists in all departments, and very little has been done here with this subject by non-residents. Only partial lists can be made of the distribution of species, and to make a list of those which probably occur would be worse than useless. The facts that I shall state are to some extent from publications already made, but principally from personal observation and investigation. The question of establishing a Society of Natural History for Central Missouri has been canvassed to some extent, and a gentleman of our city has expressed an intention of making a donation equivalent to some $3,000, if others would join with him in such amounts as would assure the permanency of the movement. Should this be done, more of our young folks would take an interest in and devote themselves, for a time at least, to some specialty, and one fact after another would be recorded, till at last the natural history of our county might be written with reasonable fullness. Central Missouri has so much that is not yet known, that a society which would encourage its members to patiently work, would be the means of creating interest and spreading knowledge of many things which are around us, but unnoticed or not understood. The amount of knowledge possessed by the people is too nearly like that of a man I met in an adjoining county, and of whom I asked if fossils, which I knew were abundant in the neighborhood, were near by. He answered that he thought they were, and then noticing a butterfly net I had in my had, he inquired if I caught them with the net. Meeting me a few hours after, his wife had the curiosity to stop me to learn what a fossil really was.

In order to make a proper report of the geology of the county, personal visits to its different parts would be necessary, and these cannot at present be made. Of several of the formations I cannot speak with confidence; this is especially so of those which do not outcrop close to Sedalia.

The fossils of the Chouteau limestone are not so well known as of other formations, and many new species from it will yet be described. There is opportunity for much work and study with these. The same is true of other subjects embraced in this paper, as will be seen from the incompleteness of the subjects as now presented.

GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY.

Within the limits of the county are found formations, extending from the Lower Silurian to the most recent.

Quaternary. Of the Quaternary period, as described by Prof. Swallow in his Geology of Missouri, there is in the county no Bottom Prairie; and while the Bluff is most abundant along the rivers, capping all the bluffs of the Missouri from Ft. Union to its mouth, and those of the Mississippi from Dubuque to the mouth of the Ohio, it also forms the upper stratum beneath the soil of all the high lands, both timber and prairie, of all the counties north of the Osage and Missouri.

The Drift is immediately under the Bluff, and is of but small thickness in the county. A few granite boulders belonging to this formation occur in the north part of the county, which is on the extreme southern line of the drift formation, and about 400 miles from the nearest point from which the granite boulders could have been obtained. The alluvium is found all over the county, and in it have been found

MASTODON REMAINS.

During the fall of 1879, Mr. R. A. Blair, of Sedalia, obtained from the Mosby farm, seven miles southeast from Sedalia, the remains of several mastodons. This animal is by the geologist considered modern, but the time when it became extinct is uncertain, though the probability is that it was before the present or historical period. Dr. Koch claimed to have found evidence that man was contemporary with it, but Prof. Dana shows that this evidence is altogether untrustworthy. The Sedalia remains were found in a spring marsh, within five feet of the surface. No shells were thrown out in the excavation; acorns and hickory nuts were close to the bones, but may have been there only a few years. The same is true of two or three Indian stone implements, one of which Mr. Blair thinks was lying under a part of the mastodon bones. This cannot, however, be used as an argument that they were deposited there before the mastodons came to that place to drink, and were mired down and unable to get out again. Until forty years ago the place around this spring was a marsh, and any small, heavy substance dropped there would soon sink to the bottom. In this case many wagon loads of rock were piled around a gum tree to make solid ground about the spring, and the pressure of these rocks would tend to force other stones under them still lower. While I would not say that these remains were not of animals contemporary with man, there certainly was no evidence found that they were so.

Conant, in his "Foot-Prints of Vanished Races," gives a fanciful picture of man in the age of the mammoth and great bear, but if he had sufficient data of man in Europe from which to make it, he at least did not have similar proofs of man and the mastodon in America.

Mastodon remains have been found in all parts of the world except Africa. In 1801, a skeleton almost complete was dug up in Orange county, New York; that in the Cambridge museum was obtained in New Jersey; that in the Boston museum, known as the Warren mastodon, at Newberg, New York, in a situation similar to the one at Sedalia; that in the New York State Museum at Cohoes, New York, and that in the Peabody Museum of Yale College in Orange county, New York.

In Indiana thirty specimens have been found, always in marshes or other miry places, and more or less decayed. About 1840 Dr. Kock procured a large collection of bones from the banks of the Missouri river, and from these Prof. Owen constructed a nearly complete skeleton, which is now set up in the British museum. Specimens have been found at three places in this county, though at two of these only a single tooth at each. At the Mosby place there were some half dozen individuals, and Mr. Blair's collection of bones and especially of teeth is large and fine, including all sizes. They probably belonged to Mostodon giganteus, Cuvier, the most common of all the species.

Carboniferous-Coal Measures.-The southern and eastern boundary of the Lower Coal Measures as given by Prof. Broadhead, enters the State in Barton county, runs thence through Vernon and St. Clair counties to eight miles south of Clinton in Henry county, thence northeast to the Henry county line, thence northwardly through Pettis county on a line which has not been exactly laid down, but it probably includes the western fourth of the county. Half way between Dresden and Lamonte are the Newport and Westlake coal banks, the two shafts being close together and leading to the same bed. The coal is about fifteen feet below the foot of the hill on which the Newport shaft is sunk, and is nearly two and one-half feet in thickness. The following is the result of analyses made by direction of the State Geologist:

In the northwest part of the county, two shafts have been sunk to coal, which varies from eighteen inches to three feet in thickness. It is but little above the Sub-carboniferous and fifty feet below the surface. It is stated that Chatetes milleporaceus, Chonetes mesoloba, Productus splendens, and Spirifer lineatus, have been found associated in no stratum except a hydraulic limestone belonging to the Lower Coal Series, so that

these may be a sure guide in exploring this part of the coal measures. The first of these fossils has always been considered characteristic of and confined to the Coal Measures, but specimens that have been identified as belonging to it have been found at Sedalia associated with Chouteau fossils, and whether it belongs in that formation, or whether the Coal Measures were eroded from that part of the country where it is found, I am not satisfied. Were it not that the specimens here are always small and apparently somewhat worn I would incline strongly to the former. In various parts of the State there are remarkable deposits of coal whose true position is not well understood. Sometimes the cannel and bituminous are found in the same bed. The coal is often of great thickness, and is found in ravines and cavities of denudation in rocks of different ages older than the coal measures. In the northeast part of the county a bed of coal nearly thirty feet in thickness occurs and is probably in a ravine in the Burlington limestone, or perhaps the same as one west of Sedalia, which is in the Chouteau.

Chester Group.-What was formerly known in our geology as Ferruginous Sandstone is now determined to be a part of the Chester group. It occurs immediately under the coal measures and outcrops along its eastern limit. It is destitute of fossils, and in this county is a coarse, whitish sandstone. It is the upper formation of the Sub-carboniferous.

Burlington Group.-With the exception of the above, the only epoch of the Sub-carboniferous that we have in the county, is the Burlington or Encrinital.

Prof. Swallow in his report states that the Archimedes limestone, or as it is now generally known, the Keokuk, occurs in the county, though I have never found it. The Burlington outcrops in various places in the north half of the county, but it is nowhere of great thickness. Some beds are made up almost entirely of plates and joints of crinoideans, and while the bodies of crinoids are not as plenty as at Burlington, Iowa, fine specimens are sometimes found, including a number of new species. The most of the beds are so solid that specimens can be obtained from them only when they happen to be but partly imbedded on the surface; yet several years collecting by the writer and Mr. R. A. Blair have given to each collection many fine and valuable crinoids, that of the writer having fifty species from the limestone, and forty species from the chert beds. In the two quarries next to the city on the north, limestone of this formation is found of irregular thickness, and not covering the entire surface. In each of these quarries it rests immediately upon the Chouteau, and no where exceeds four feet in thickness.

At Georgetown the same bed crops out; also at the railroad cuts beyond Georgetown and beyond the bridge across the Muddy, at which latter place this formation is not more than fifteen feet thick.