IO ON THE TIMBER LANDS TRAVERSED BY A 
tioned, that the formations best adapted to the growth of 
chestnut timber are the Conglomerate and Chester sand- 
stones. On soils from these formations chestnut is normally 
found in the greatest abundance, and growing to the greatest: 
perfection. In passing from Western to Eastern Kentucky, 
my attention was therefore attracted to the fact that when 
the Big Clifty (Chester) sandstone first appeared, which was 
in the neighborhood of Hopkinsville and on Pilot Knob, no 
chestnut appeared with it. Moreover, the white oak and 
liriodendron, away from the streams, seemed scrubby and 
scarce. Otherwise the forest was normal, and I searched in 
vain for any clue to the absence of these timbers. I finally 
came to the conclusion that, long ago, the entire country 
through here, reaching probably as far west as the Cum- 
berland river, had been laid waste by fires, and had been 
barrens similar to those still remaining in the Purchase, and 
further east in Barren and other counties. 
Mr. Irvine Kennedy, who has lived in this part of Ken- 
tucky for sixty-eight years, and who now resides near Elk- 
ton, informed me that my conjecture was correct, and that 
he could remember when all these heavy forests were a 
uniform growth of young trees, with not an old tree stand- 
ing, except on streams too large for fires to sweep through 
their swamps. 
I was afterward informed that some chestnut groves exist 
not far from Elkton, though I did not see a tree. It is pos- 
sible that they stand in a piece of woods for some reason 
protected from the ravages of fires. Without special inves- 
tigation made for that purpose, it is impossible to arrive at 
anything near the extent of Kentucky forests which repre- 
sent, not the original growths of the State, but a kind of sec- 
ond growth, sprung haphazard from the burial-place of the 
primeval forests. 
In a previous report on the timbers of the Purchase Dis- 
trict (see Report, volume V, this series), attention was called 
to the remarkable absence of chestnut from that part of Ken- 
tucky, although the formation is a mill-stone grit waste, on 
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