330 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [Nov. 



companied with a descriptive article, were donated to, 

 and placed upon record by the New York Microscopical 

 Society. In the light of my present experience and 

 familiarity with the dejiosits, the results noted above 

 would appear to be trivial in comparison. With the 

 greater experience since acquired, the same deposits can 

 by proper treatment be made to yield their interesting 

 fossil contents, sufficient for hundreds of slides at a time. 

 The result of a single cleaning is that a momentary 

 glance at a slide acquaints the observer with all of the 

 curious and interesting features of the deposits. While 

 the deposits are not of transcendent interest as regards the 

 beauty or richness of the forms they have an interest, 

 regarded from a geological standpoint, probably equal to 

 that of the renowned deposits which have in past times 

 contributed so much. The latter, already familiar to 

 students of the microcosm, are usually and chiefly de- 

 rived from the strata of marine islands which project 

 their summits and slopes from deep blue seas, while 

 these, the subject of this paper, are derived from sedi- 

 mentary strata forming an integral part of our North 

 American continent. The retrogressing waters from an 

 ancient sea left these high and dry, but their sediments 

 were doubtless laid down in a sea whose waves oscillated 

 and pulsated in the Eocene period of the Tertiary, or in 

 that just following the epoch of the " Chalk " — and whose 

 sedimentary siliceous clays lap over the rocks of the cre- 

 taceous period. 



Recently, and during the month of June, 1895, I had a 

 favorable opportunity in which to study the characteris- 

 tics of the strata yielding these Radiolarian clays. I was 

 traveling, due east on the public highway, from Quitman, 

 Miss., to Butler, the county seat of Choctaw County, Ala., 

 a distance of thirty-two miles. Along the route trav- 

 ersed, the summits of the axial lines of the Buhrstone 

 ridges were crossed at frequent intervals, and over them 



