CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. 265 



long grass waved on the hills with a heavy surf-like motion, until at last it 

 was blended with the hazy atmosphere, which met the horizon. The power 

 of sight was shut out by nothing ; it had its full scope, and we gazed around 

 until our eyes ached with the very vastness of the view that lay before 

 them. There was a degree of pain, of loneliness, in the scene. A tree 

 would have been a companion, a friend. It would have taken away the 

 very desolation which hung round us, and would have thrown an air of 

 sociability over the face of nature ; but there were none. The annual fires 

 which sweep over the whole face of the country during the autumn of every 

 year, effectually destroy every thing of the kind. There will be no forest 

 as long as the Indians possess these regions; for every year, when the 

 season of hunting arrives, they set fire to the long dry grass. Once fairly 

 on its errand, the destructive messenger speeds onward, licking up every 

 blade and every bush ; until some strip of timber, whose tall trees protect 

 the shrubbery, by the dampness which they diffuse beneath, or some 

 stream, stops it in its desolating path. 



" The object of burning the grass is to drive the deer and elk that are 

 roving over the broad extent of the prairies, into the small groves of tim- 

 ber scattered over the surface. Once enclosed within these thickets, they 

 fall an easy prey to the hunters." — Irving' s Indian Sketches, 1835. 



The next extracts are from an article in Silliman's Journal, by W. W. 

 McGuire, on the prairies of Alabama. 



" In speaking of the prairies, tiie rock formation claims particular atten- 

 tion. It is uniformly found below the prairie soil, at various depths, 

 ranging from ten to fifteen feet, and it sometimes projects above the ground. 

 This rock is generally known by the name of rotten limestone ; when re- 

 moved for several feet on the top, and exposed to the action of the atmo- 

 sphere for some time, it assumes a beautiful white color. In its sofl state it 

 is easily quarried, and blocks of almost any dimensions can be procured. 

 It has been dressed by planes and other instruments, and used in building 

 chimneys, some of which have stood twelve or fifteen years without injury 

 or decay. A summer's seasoning is requisite to fit it for building. This 

 rock has been penetrated !)y boring to depths varying from one hundred to 

 five hundred and fifty feet; after the first six or seven feet, it is of a bluish 

 or gray color, but still sofl except in a few instances, where flint strata of a 

 foot thick or more have been met with. On perforating the rock, a full 

 supply of good water is always obtained, which uniformly flows over the 

 top. I have heard of no constant running stream of water over this rock, 

 except one in Pickens county, near the lower line. The superincumbent 

 earth is for a few feet composed principally of stiff clay, of whitish color; 

 then comes the mould of soil, which is very black— in wet weather it is 

 extremely miry and stiff, and in dry, very hard and compact. 



"Shells, such as the oyster, muscle, periivinkle, and- some other kinds, are 

 found in great quantities throughout almost all the prairies of Alabama and 

 Mississippi ; the first named being the most numerous, mixed in every pro- 

 portion with the others. The oyster shells are perfectly similar to those 

 now obtained from the oyster banks on the shores of the Atlantic. The 

 largest beds of shells in the open prairies seem to occupy rather elevated, 

 but not the highest places. They have probably been removed from the 

 more elevated situations by torrents of rain. It may be that the lowest 

 places never contained any shells; or if they did, as vegetable matter ac- 

 cumulates in greater quantities in low situations, they may have been thus 

 covered. In some instances I believe they have been found in such places, 

 several feet below the surface. They are not found in very large quanti- 

 ties in the timbered prairies ; and indeed, so far as I have observed, where- 



