Overlooking the Delta on the east like a great wall running 

 from Memphis to Vicksburg in a sweeping crescent, then hugging 

 the Mississippi River southward to the Louisiana line, are the 

 Bluff of Loess Hills, rising 150 to 200 feet above the river, 

 precipitous and extremely rugged. The capping of these hills 

 to a depth of 20 to 40 feet is the Loess formation, a fine yellowish 

 gray calcareous silt, with a thin blanket of a reddish brown 

 clayey loam overlying it. This range of hills averages only a few 

 miles in width. 



All the' reigon lying to the east, from the Tennessee line to 

 the vicinity of Canton, and eastward to the Rotten Limestone 

 prairies, is an ancient plateau of 500 to 600 feet altitude, now intri- 

 cately dissected into hills and valleys and presenting on the 

 whole a rough topography. This mature erosion antedates pres- 

 ent conditions, the original slopes having been heavily timbered 

 when the country was settled, and where the timber still remains 

 washing of the land has not taken place. 



Underlying most of this area is the Wilcox Formation of the 

 early Tertiary, a formation consisting very largely of beds of 

 sand with alternating clays. Above the Wilcox rests, over most 

 of the area, a layer of orange red sand the Lafayette, so called 

 from Lafayette County which varies in thickness from a few 

 to twenty or more feet. The clayey loam which overlies the Loess 

 spreads like a thin blanket over this area as well, where not re- 

 moved by erosion. 



In east Mississippi a broad area of gently rolling prairies 

 marks the outcrop of a soft limestone of Cretaceous age. The soil 

 is residual from the limestone on the whole, and is a dark 

 sticky clay. 



From Canton to Jackson and extending eastward across the 

 State is a region of slight relief and of prairies somewhat similar 

 to that of the Cretaceous area. A dense clay marl underlies the 

 surface, the soil consisting of the residual materials of the 



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