82 GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF ALABAMA CLAYS. 



an area in Alabama thirty or forty miles wide and 

 about the same width in Mississippi. 



From here towards the southeast the breadth of 

 the belt gradually diminishes, till at Wetumpka and 

 thence eastward to the State line, it forms the surface 

 along a belt of only a few miles width. 



To the eastward of the Alabama river, the propor- 

 tion of clay to the rest of the strata is less than in the 

 other direction, and at the same time the clays 

 themselves are as a rule 'more sandy. But from the 

 Alabama river northwestward, in the gullies, ravines, 

 and railroad cuts, there are many exposures of these 

 beds, exhibiting sections of clay beds from six to for- 

 ty or fifty feet in thickness, and of varying degrees of 

 purity. In a general way we may say that the purer 

 clays, resmbling kaolin in composition, have as yet 

 been found only in the northern part of this area in 

 Fayette, Marion, Franklin and Colbert counties, and 

 the adjoining parts of Mississippi. 



In my Coastal Plain Keport, published in 1894,* 

 I have brought together many details concerning the 

 Tuscaloosa formation in the counties of Lee, Rus- 

 sell, Macon, Elmore, Autauga, Chilton, Perry, Bibb, 

 Tuscaloosa, Pickens, Lamar, Fayette, Marion, 

 Franklin and Colbert, and the reader is referred to 

 that book for full discussion of the formation. 



In order, however, to present the clay occurrences 

 as completely as possible I shall give extracts from 

 the Coastal Plain Report in so far as they may be 

 descriptive of the deposits of clay. 



To these extracts are added a number of details 

 received from a report made by Dr. George Little, 

 who in 1891, spent several months making for the 

 Geological Survey y some examinations of the clays 



*Pages 307-349, 531-2, 536, 541, 545, 549 554, 556, 559. 



