THE HILL COUNTRY AND COASTAL PLAIN 

 CONTRASTED. 



THE subdivisions of Alabama which are about to be 

 described fall naturally into two classes. Those 

 numbered 1 to 5, covering about two-fifths of the area 

 of the state, constitute the hill country or mineral re- 

 gion, while the remainder belong to the coastal plain, 

 which borders the coast from New York to Mexico, and 

 is poor in minerals, water-power and mountain scenery, 

 but rich in agricultural and timber resources. The line 

 between them is called the fall-line, because most of the 

 rivers which cross it have falls there. 



In the hill country of Alabama the rocks are all 

 Paleozoic and older, except for a few local alluvial depos- 

 its, etc., and some of them are very m_uch folded and 

 faulted; while in the coastal plain there are no strata 

 older than Cretaceous, and they have been very little 

 disturbed by movements of the earth's crust ,having in 

 most places a gentle dip to the southwestv/ard or away 

 from the hill country. This difference in geological age 

 is the fundamental distinction, but there are others 

 which can be easily made out by persons who are not 

 geologists. Almost everywhere in the hill country hard 

 rocks abound and sand is scarce; while the reverse is 

 true over the greater part of the coastal plain (more so 

 farther east than in Alabama, though). In most parts 

 of the coastal plain the fossiliferous strata are covered to 

 a depth of several feet with a layer of loam or sand, or 

 sometimes both, commonly regarded as of Pliocene age 

 or later.* 



*In the last few years some of the younger geologists have 

 been asserting that this superficial formation, or most of it at 

 least, is nothing but the weathered portions of the Cretaceous and 

 Tertiary strata; but there are many facts that are not consistent 

 with this hypothesis, and if such a simple explanation was the 

 correct one it would probably have been proposed long ago, and 

 universally accepted by this time. 



(35) 



