70 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



present. As a result the soil is so poor that 

 blue-grass will not nourish on it. Wire-grass, 

 asters, sassafras, sumac, blackberries, black 

 gum, beech and black oak are among the more 

 common wild forms of vegetation which it pro- 

 duces. Thus poor in fertility it spreads over a 

 wide area of the State. Easily eroded and there- 

 fore rugged and broken, its farmlands are per- 

 haps less valuable than those of any but one of 

 the great surface formations of southern Indi- 

 ana. Where the streams during the ages past 

 have eroded a valley of some width, there are 

 small fields in their flood plains over which the 

 high waters flow once or twice each year de- 

 positing a sediment of richer silt from the high- 

 lands above. These " bottom fields" are the 

 oases of the hill farmers, the corn raised on them 

 enabling them to fatten a few hogs, tide their 

 cattle and horses through the winters and at the 

 same time furnishing meal for their own corn- 

 bread and mush. 



The ridge on which I rest and write is on the 

 extreme western edge of the Knobstone forma- 

 tion in this vicinity. Two hundred yards 

 farther west, the Harrodsburgh limestone sets 

 in and, together with the Mitchell limestone, 

 forms the surface rocks to the westward over an 

 area nearly twenty miles in width. This ridge 

 then was once near the rim of the sea and over 

 it and into the depressions far to the east and 



