What Prof. Mudge Found in Topeka
and Osage City.

MANKATTAN, July 3, 1873.

To the Editor of the Commonwealth.

A recent geological discovery made in
your city may be interesting to your read-
ers. A few days ago in crossing Kansas
avenue I noticed a slab of flagging with
footprints of reptiles deeply marked upon
the solid stone. I had no hesitancy in re-
ferring it to the Osage flagging quarries
of Crane & Dodd. Taking the next train
for that place, forty miles from Topeka, I
carefully examined all quarries, old and
new, and was well rewarded for my
trouble.

The quarries are, geologically, just above
the middle of the coal measures, and
about a dozen feet above the coal seam
worked at Osage and Carbondale. The
flagging consists of four principal layers,
one and a half, two, three and four inches
respectively, interlaid by thin seams of soft
shale. They are fine grained sandstone,
of very fine texture, coming out in slabs
sometimes ten feet by twenty-five feet. As
flagging they are not excelled by any we
have ever seen. Geologically they are of
more interest, as these footprints are sel-
dom found in the coal measures, and these
are the first that have been discovered
west of the Mississippi, and probably west
of Pennsylvania. I found at Osage
about twenty different slabs, covered more
or less with the footprints; one containing
over a dozen. They were made by
four different species of animals. Those
on the upper layer were the most numer-
ous and were all casts. The soft shale
under it, which contained the true tracks,

was so soft that it crumbled before remov-
al. There were two species on this layer,
both saurian-like. The largest is fully
eight inches in length, with long slender
toes.

The tracks at the old quarry were the
real foot-print; and in a few cases with
the casts above them, also in good condi-
tion. One of those somewhat resembled
a cheiro-therian track, with short toes,
nearly of equal length, blunt and rounded
at the extremity. In this foot-print the
hind track covers the front, or overlaps it
nearly one-half; just as is seen in living
animals. This foot-print is about five
inches wide, but the length is obscure,
from the fact that the animal appeared to
have borne its weight mostly on the toes.

The fourth foot-print was small, not
more than an inch long, and unlike any-
thing I have ever seen.

In the slabs are a variety of salt water
fossils, showing that at the time these foot-
prints were made, this was a shoal portion
of the ocean, and that these amphibians
were in the habit of crawling from land to
water, and at low tide left their tracks on
the, then, soft mud.

All these slabs will be removed to the
agricultural college, when a critical and
more scientific description, will be pub-
lished. I have suggested that the first
slab discovered, be placed in the collection
of the academy of science at the state
capitol.

I am under many obligations to John
F. Dodds and son for their attentive kind-
ness toward me, while investigating the
localities of these fossils and the geologi-
cal features of the vicinity.

B. F. MUDGE.