BROWN AND YELLOW LOAM OF NORTH MISSISSIPPI 289 



highly colored clays. Where there has been freer circulation of 

 water, and where roots of recent plants have penetrated them, 

 these clays have become more friable and partially decolorized, 

 the change from their former condition being indicated, as 

 already noted, by the peculiar distribution of the remaining fer- 

 ric oxide, which frequently retains the shape of stems and leaves 

 but not their texture. And in many instances such markings are 

 traceable by the lighter color and by the more disintegrated con- 

 dition of the clay where fossils seem to have existed, the ferric 

 oxide having been, it seems, more completely removed, subse- 

 quently, than from the surrounding clay. Much care, however, 

 is needed in the interpretation of many of these tracings, part 

 of which are due to the action of roots of recent plants, part to 

 the collection of ferric oxide on slickenside surfaces resulting 

 from the jointing of the clay and the scratching of joint sur- 

 faces by their movement over sand grains. Such markings fre- 

 quently give a fluted appearance resembling very much the 

 impressions of parallel veined leaves. 



The foregoing considerations, it seems to me, render it highly 

 improbable that the coarser and clayey materials of this pecu- 

 liar bowlder conglomerate could have been transported for the 

 distance of several miles by running water. 



The peculiar admixture of sand with clay bowlders, large 

 and small, rounded and angular, with no trace of sorting, sug- 

 gests to the writer the possibility of this deposit having been 

 formed after a partial reelevation succeeding the Lafayette sub- 

 sidence, by the sapping of the banks of a small post-Lafayette 

 lake or stream. 



The inability to discover similar plant remains in the adja- 

 cent Lafayette might be explained by the removal of the origi- 

 nal beds by plantation. 



It is barely possible that this particular deposit may have 

 been made by floating ice during the first interglacial epoch 

 (or more probably during the first interglacial episode of the 

 first glacial epoch), and I shall present, later, evidence of ice- 

 berg action at this time, in this vicinity — but the elevation of 



