96 GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF ALABAMA CLAYS. 



At Williford's landing the purple clays show about 

 ten feet in thickness below the second bottom, or river 

 deposits. 



At Steele's Bluff, and a few miles below, at 

 White's Bluff, similar purple or mottled clays make 

 about ten feet thickness of the river bluff. 



Westward and northwestward of Tuscaloosa the 

 clays appear along all the roads for many miles to 

 the western boundary of the county, and beyond into 

 Pickens. The clays when freshly exposed are of gray 

 color, but undergo a series of changes in consequence 

 of weathering, and the oxidation of the iron which 

 they contain. First, the gray becomes specked with 

 red, and this color gradually increases in proportion 

 until it prevails, and the whole body of clay becomes 

 a dark red or purple mass, with few, if any, of the 

 fragments of the original gray color. 



At John Mills', about thirteen miles from Tusca- 

 loosa, on t'he Shirley Bridge road, the following sec- 

 tion is made by Dr. Little : 



Section in Tuscaloosa County. 



1. Red loam and sand (Lafayette) 10 feet 



2. Ferruginous sandstone crust 6 feet 



3. Blue clay (Sample No. 1) 6 feet 



4. Yellow sand, with indurated crust above and 



below 7 feet 



5. Blue Clay (No. 2) 6 feet 



4. Yellow sand, with indurated crust above and 



On the Fayette Court House road the same clays 

 show at many points, but the most promising clays 

 along this road have been observed beyond the Tusca- 

 loosa county line in Fayette. 



The Mobile and Ohio road to the northwest of the 

 city of Tuscaloosa exposes in many of its cuts beds of 

 clay, which have been a source of much trouble and 

 expense house of the filling of these cuts by the 



