Miscellanies. 189 



miuous plants. When wet it is like mortar, and when dry becomes 

 very hard, where it is trampled. The creeks and rivers running 

 through it have their beds in the rock, as the soil is friable and easily 

 washed off. 



Now the question is, how this kind of country came here? From 

 this place to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico is two hundred miles; 

 but in all the intervening country, there is nothing to indicate that it 

 was once the bed of the sea. From this to St. Stephens, it is much 

 broken, the hills, in some instances, rising to several hundred feet 

 above the river, and there is, also, a coal formation below. From 

 St. Stephens to the Mobile Point, (one hundred miles,) it is almost 

 a perfect plain, covered with pines, and, except some shell banks, 

 no fossil remains. The hills about thirty miles above St. Stephens, 

 are composed of a sort of sandstone, and below, the soil is almost 

 entirely siliceous and barren, except on the river banks. Here, it 

 seems to be formed by decomposed shells, and other calcareous and 

 marine productions. It is entirely different from the blue limestone 

 region of the west, and from the sand hills and plains of the south"; 

 and the prairie region here, although once evidently covered by the 

 sea, is now much higher than the sandy country immediately around 

 it, as if the rock below had first grown by accretion, and then thrown 

 up the prairie. 



18. Sulphurets of Bismuth; by Lt. W. W. Mather, in a letter 

 to the Editor, dated West Point, March 5, 1833. — There seems to 

 be another sulphuret of bismuth, than the two already described. 

 Reading your system of chemistry some time since, it mentioned that 

 a sulphuret of bismuth, consisting of bismuth seventy two, and sul- 

 phur sixteen, may be formed by fusing three parts bismuth and one 

 sulphur. As I had never seen the sulphuret of bismuth, I fused 

 seventy two grains of bismuth and twenty four grains of sulphur, in a 

 small closely covered crucible, which had been previously ignited 

 and then weighed. The fusion was continued for about half an hour. 

 After cooling, the crucible was again weighed, but the crucible instead 

 of having increased in weight 88 grains, —72+16, as was expected, 

 had increased only 80.15 grains =72 + 8.15, or the one proportional 

 of bismuth =72, had combined with but a small fraction more than 

 one half proportional of sulphur, or 8.15. 



Thinking there might have been some error in weighing out the 

 materials, the experiment was repeated, and, for greater accuracy, 

 with larger proportions. 



