LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL 



To His Excellency, 



Governor Thomas E. Kilby, 

 Montgomery, Alabama. 



DEAR SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith man- 

 uscript of a report on the Resources of Southern Alabama, 

 by Dr. Roland M. Harper, with the recommendation that it 

 be printed as Special Report No. 11 of the Geological Survey 

 of Alabama. 



The recent agitation for settling discharged United 

 States soldiers on farms has suggested the advisability of 

 presenting to the public some impartial, accurate and specific 

 information about the agricultural and other natural re- 

 sources of Alabama, in greater detail than has been at- 

 tempted hitherto. This information should be of service 

 not only to soldiers but also to any other prospective set- 

 tlers and investors. 



To cover the whole State in as much detail as is under- 

 taken in this report would have consumed more time and 

 money than could be spared at present, and we therefore 

 decided to make a beginning with the southern third, the 

 section that has had the greatest agricultural development 

 in recent decades and has been most extensively advertised 

 in the last year or two. 



If there is sufficient demand for this sort of informa- 

 tion, the other sections of the State may be treated in a 

 similar manner in the near future. 



Although the report is based largely on census statistics, 

 the latest of which are now ten years old, it may be two or 

 three years before the complete agricultural returns from 

 this year's census are available, and it seemed best not to 

 wait for them but instead to estimate present conditions as 

 closely as possible from past developments and from recent 

 investigations in the field. Between 1905 and 1913 the 

 author visited every county in the State and prepared a 

 report on the Forests of Alabama, that was published in 

 1913 as Monograph 8 of this Survey. Since that time he 

 has carried on similar investigations in northern Florida 

 from the Geological Survey of that State, and spent about a 

 year with the U. S. Department of Agriculture in Washing- 

 ton, working on the Agricultural Atlas of the United States, 



