FORESTS OF UPPER DIVISION OF COAST PINE BELT. 107 
width, not rarely interrupted by steep ridges where the lowest Terti- 
ary strata offered greatest resistance to erosion. The highest ridges 
are frequently capped with the sands and gravels of the Lafayette 
formation, which are under cover of the long-leaf pine, as are likewise 
the rugged hills of flinty clay stones and siliceous rocks of the buhr- 
stone strata which traverse the central part of this region in a south- 
easterly and northwesterly direction, sloping toward the east. East 
of Patsaliga Creek the hills become less prominent, the softer strata of 
the Eocene Tertiary spread out into undulating table-lands, and the 
generous brown soil supports the mixed growth of xerophile and 
mesophile woody species, evergreen and deciduous, characteristic of 
the region. ‘Toward the south the surface becomes less broken. East 
of the Alabama River the drifted deposits form broad table-lands 
between the streams, occasionally inclosing more or less extensive 
tracts with the calcareous strata of the Middle Tertiary for the surface 
rock, very similar in their soil and vegetation to the post-oak prairies 
of the preceding region. In Dale County and westward to the State 
line beds of white sand (Ozark sands) overspread the loamy sands and 
gravels, rendering the soil arid and sterile. 
West of the Alabama River, in the southern part of Clarke and 
Choctaw counties, calcareous strata form the surface rock over large 
areas identical in their soil conditions and the character of their vege- 
tation with the isolated tracts farther east just mentioned. 
Xerophile forests.—The rocky ridges of the Buhrstone, or those 
capped with the more recent drifted strata, are covered with magnifi- 
cent forests of long-leaf pine which are nowhere surpassed in their 
timber wealth within the range of this tree. This applies particularly 
to the forests which cover the hills between the Alabama and Tom- 
bigbee rivers. By careful estimates made upon a number of plots, 
selected at random, the yield of a single acre will vary from 10,000 to 
18,000 feet and over of merchantable timber. In these forests, which 
grow from a deep warm soil consisting of sandy loams, dogwood and 
black jack form the scanty undergrowth. The rocky crests and most 
abrupt declivities of the highest of these hills afford but a scanty foot- 
hold to the pine. The rocky ground is sparingly covered by the fol- 
lowing shrubs, all of them bushes, except the last, which is a creeper 
branching from the base: 
Vaecinium stamineum (deerberry) . Viburnum acerifolium (maple-leaved ar- 
Gaylussacia dumosa (dwarf huckleberry). rowwood) . 
Vaceinium myrsinites (bilberry). Smilax bona-now forma pandurata (bam- 
boo brier). 
Forests of long-leaf pine predominate wherever the older rocks are 
ta) 
deeply hidden under the sands and gravels, and where this region 
passes imperceptibly into the pine uplands of the Lower Division of 
the Maritime Pine belt. The herbaceous plant associations in these 
