CHAPTER XVII. 



EDGAR, FORD AND CHAMPAIGN COUNTIES. 



Edgar county lies adjacent to the eastern part of the State, and is bounded 

 on the north by Vermilion county, on the west by Coles county, and on the 

 south by Clark county. It is nearly a square, being about twenty-three and a 

 half miles long by about twenty-seven miles wide, and thus containing some- 

 thing less than six hundred and forty square miles. 



The eastern and southern borders of the county, comprising perhaps two- 

 fifths of its area, are occupied by the timbered land adjoining the breaks of the 

 streams which run toward the Wabash. The remainder, with the exception of 

 a few sections about the head of Embarras river, in the western edge of the 

 county, is occupied by the Grand Prairie, some arms of which also run quite 

 deeply into the timber, along the divides between the different creeks. 



The timber is mainly the same as that of the timbered lands to the north- 

 ward ; but in the southeastern part of the county, beech begins to take a promi- 

 nent place, and considerable numbers of pines find congenial soil above the 

 heavy-bedded sandstones which form the bluffs of the Barren Fork and its 

 branches, in the edge of Clark county, south of Grandview. 



The prairie generally has a deep black mucky soil, but, in some of its east- 

 ern extensions into the timber, this is mostly wanting, and the soft dark brown 

 clay of the subsoil comes nearly to the surface. The bottoms of the prairie 

 sloughs generally contain more or less light brown marly clay containing fresh 

 water shells. From one of these slough bottoms, a nearly perfect skeleton of a 

 Mastodon was obtained some years since, which, after having been exhibited 

 through all this part of the United States, is said to have been sold to a Phila- 

 delphia museum. Fragments of skeletons of this animal are not rare here- 

 abouts. 



The beds of the Drift period do not show any very great thickness in this 

 county, and only the boulder-clay member is well developed. They may per- 

 haps attain a depth of one hundred feet in the northern part of the county. 

 Where any considerable quantities of these materials occur, they arc generally 

 underlaid by a heavy bed of water-bearing quicksand, apparently continuous 



