THE COASTAL PLAIN OF ARKANSAS 45 



any natural vegetation still remains on them; but they ought to be 

 in\'estigated before it is too late. 



Forrest City, the county-seat of St. Francis County, where I 

 stopped twenty-three hours, is on the western slope of Crowley's 

 Ridge, which is probably the most conspicuous topographic 

 feature in the whole coastal plain of Arkansas. Volume 2 of the 

 reports of the Geological Survey of Arkansas for 1889, by R. 

 Ellsworth Call, published in 1891, is wholly devoted to this 

 singular ridge, so that I will not undertake to describe it in detail 

 here. It extends in a gentle curve from somewhere in southeastern 

 Missouri to Helena, Arkansas (on the Mississippi River), averag- 

 ing several miles in width, and standing over 100 feet above the 

 river-bottoms on either side. Its eastern slope in the latitude of 

 Forrest City, where the St. Francis River washes its base, is very 

 precipitous for an earth slope, and from that side one could 

 probabl}' see some of the tall buildings in Memphis, forty miles 

 away, if the air were clear enough. 



The ridge is covered with loess, which looks like common yellow 

 dust compacted and is usually many feet thick. Some late Ter- 

 tiar}'- gra^^els and older formations are exposed in ravines and on 

 steep slopes. About half the area is cultivated, and the remainder 

 is nearh^ all covered with hardwood forest. In Call's monograph 

 just referred to there is an interesting annotated list of about 

 fifty species of trees growing on or near Crowley's Ridge, with 

 about a third of a page de\'oted to each ; but a few of the species 

 seem to have been erroneously identified, as .if the author had 

 relied too much on the common names. 



On June 15 I walked diagonally across this ridge in St. Francis 

 County from Colt, nine miles north of Forrest City, to Madison, 

 four miles east, and noted the plants listed in Table C, in dry 

 woods, ravines, blufTs, creek bottoms, etc. They are arranged 

 as nearly as possible in order of abundance, as usual, but the 

 frequency numbers are omitted, because they are too small to 

 have much significance. 



