SOILS. 79 



the population, and this, from present prospects, will soon 

 happen since the pine has been cut off or destroyed by fire 

 over very much of the territory. 



Bottom Soils. Along all the larger streams of the Coastal 

 Plain region we find developed normally three well defined 

 terraces. The first terrace or bottom is subject to overflow 

 and its soils are the sands and other materials periodically de- 

 posited by the stream, and are the most recent perhaps of the 

 formations. A few feet above the high water mark and con- 

 sequently not subject to overflow except in the depressions 

 caused by erosion, are the second bottoms, with very charac- 

 teristic soils, yellowish silty loams increasing in sandiness 

 from above downwards. The second bottoms are on an av- 

 erage perhaps a mile in width, and are always choice farming 

 lands. Upon this terrace are many of the great plantations 

 of ante bellum days. 



About 100 feet above the second bottom we find a third ter- 

 race averaging some three miles in width, the soils of which 

 are of the usual Lafayette type, red sandy loam underlaid by 

 pebbles. On this terrace are situated most of the river towns 

 such as Tuscaloosa, Selma, Cahaba, Claiborne, St. Stephens, 

 Jackson, Columbia, etc. The soils on this terrace are not es- 

 sentially different from the Lafayette soils elsewhere, unless 

 possibly they are a trifle more sandy. Above this third ter- 

 race at varying elevations are the broad level uplands mak- 

 ing the inters tr earn country of the Coastal Plain, and it is 

 upon these uplands that we find the most characteristic and 

 widely distributed of the soils of this region based upon the 

 red sandy loam of the Lafayette. 



