74 



GEOLOGICAL REPORT. 



LOCALITIES OF COAL. 



TIMBER. 



The broad, rich bottoms of all the streams on the line of this 

 road, sustain a very heavy growth of most excellent timber of 

 nearly all the most useful varieties. Bur, red, laurel, pin, and 

 swamp white oaks ; black and white walnuts ; white, blue and 

 black ashes ; white, red and wahoo elms ; red birch, honey lo- 

 cust, buck-eye, box elder, black cherry, hackberry, pignut and 

 common and thick shellbark hickories, red bud, sugar and white 

 maples, mulberry, American plum, hazle, pawpaw, sycamore, 

 muscadine, summer and fox grapes, and several species of 

 thorn and willow, are most abundant. 



The slopes and some of the high lands are covered with heavy 

 forests of nearly all the trees found in the bottoms ; while other 

 portions of the high lands produce a medium growth of white, 

 black, Spanish, post and chestnut oaks, shellbark hickory, su- 

 machs, hazles and grapes. But a still larger part is sparsely tim- 

 bered with small black-jacks, post oaks, and black hickories, 

 forming the beautiful oak-openings of the south-west. This 

 stunted growth is not, however, due to the poverty of the soil, 

 but to the fires which have annually overrun this country since 

 the earliest dates of the Indian traditions. These fires, fed by 

 the rank annual growth of grasses and other herbaceous plants, 

 have entirely destroyed some of the young trees, while they 

 have scorched and very much retarded the growth of those suf- 

 ficiently vigorous to withstand their ravages. 



