Concerning the Subcarboniferous, or Mississippian Series in Part I.,
Vol. IV., Missouri Geological Survey, Dr. C.R. Keyes says: "In the great
interior basin of the Mississippi the basal series is exposed more or
less continuously over broad areas, extending from northern Iowa to
Alabama, and from Ohio to Mexico."
While this broadly extended series of limestone is honey-combed in many
places and all directions by wonderful caverns, those of the Ozark
regions in Missouri, although comparatively little known, are well worth
knowing, and are possibly the most ancient limestone caves in the world.
Of the region in which they occur, Dr. Keyes, in the volume last quoted,
says: "The chief typographical feature of the state has long been known
in the Ozark uplift, a broad plateau with gentle quaquaversal slopes
rising to a height of more than one thousand five hundred feet above
mean tide, and extending almost entirely across the southern part of the
district. On all sides the borders of this highland area are deeply
grooved by numberless streams flowing in narrow gorges. Against its
nucleus of very ancient granites and porphyries the Ozark series of
magnesian limestone was laid down. Then the area occupied by these rocks
was elevated, and around its margins were deposited successively the
other members of the Paleozoic.
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