SECTION FROM THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO POUND GAP. 29 
black oak, and scrub hickory. On low grounds considerable 
white oak, pig hickory, and winged elm are found, but they 
are not valuable. 
About five and one half miles from Mansville, we pass from 
the Devonian shale onto the underlying Corniferous limestone, 
of which there is a layer of only three to five feet in thickness 
in this locality. Underlying this again is the so-called Cum- 
berland sandstone, a bluish, silicious, almost semi-limestone: 
formation. The only immediate change of timber noticed 
was the introduction of a few swamp chestnut oaks, and their 
presence cannot be attributed merely to change of formation. 
Some white and sugar maples appear on low grounds, with 
sweet and black gum, white oak, red oak, and iron-wood. 
On the Cumberland sandstone liriodendron again becomes: 
a conspicuous timber, and the forests become much better in 
every way. On a large hill, about seven miles from Mans- 
ville, the woods are exceedingly rich. The principal timbers 
are blue ash, Ohio buckeye, black walnut, white and shag 
hickory, liriodendron, and white oak. Big buckeye forms: 
from forty to seventy-five per cent. of the timbers in this rich 
forest. On the eastern face of this chain of hills, not far 
above its base, and about ten miles from Mansville, we pass. 
onto the Cincinnati limestone. The timbers do not vary in 
kind from those given above, and there are no changes for 
several miles, except that occasionally a hackberry or an aspen 
is Seen. 
Taken as a whole, the standing forests are poor and valueless 
all along South Rolling fork. The formation alternates be- 
tween Cumberland sandstone and Cincinnati limestone—first up 
onto the former, then down onto the latter, and so on. All 
through the valleys the timbers have been cut away, and on 
the hills they are worthless. 
At about six miles south of Hustonville (twenty miles from 
Mansville), there is the largest forest of bartram oak I know 
of in Kentucky. The valuable timbers are all cut away, on 
low and high grounds alike. The standing forests are worth- 
less, and are likely to remain so, unless a thrifty cultivation 
and protection soon succeed the long-continued destruction. 
199, 
