«IflK]| LIGNITIC OF YALLABUSH A— CARROLL. 121 



in bluffs on the banks of the latter stream, gray sand appears. The wells at 

 Coffeeville have freestone water, but a short distance W. of town, wells strike 

 "black dirt'' and poor water. Traveling S. we next meet an outcrop on the S. 

 bluff of Okachicama Creek, the steep hillside being altogether denuded of surface 

 material, and exhibiting some 30 feet of laminated clay, which is gray while wet, 

 but when dry almost white. Like the clay of the Flatwoods, when once disin- 

 tegrated, it readily forms a highly tenacious mud, which has given some un- 

 pleasant notoriety to this hillside, among the waggoners. This clay is found for 

 'about a mile each way from the crossing, on the banks of the creek; but wells 

 dug on the ridge prove it to be only a very narrow band, since it is struck no 

 more a few hundred yards S. of the creek, at 50 feet. Very shallow wells 

 prove the impervious clay to be not far from the surface on Perry's Creek, on 

 the S. side of which it crops out, not far above the crossing of the Coffeeville 

 and GrenaJa road. Near Grenada, according to L. Harper, dark, laminated, 

 micaceous clay crops out on S. 13, T. 22, E. 4 E , giving rise to an alum spring. 



183. Little else than Orange Sand is to be seen in N. Carroll, along the line of 

 the M. C. R. R. A few miles N. of Middleton, however, we hear of "blue dirt" 

 in the wells, and it appears in these, as well as in a few outcrops, between 

 Middleton and Shongalo. Near the latter place, at. Vaiden Station, we find in a 

 R. R. cut, associated with gray and brown clays more or less lignitic and 

 gypseous, a mass composed of sharp, coarse siliceous sand and grains of glaucon- 

 ite, cemented by hydrated peroxide of iron, with more or less clay, and contain- 

 ing numerous impressions of shells, apparently of the Claiborne Group. 



The position of the strata in this interesting locality cannot, unfortunately, 

 be very clearly observed, in consequence of the southward ascent of the grade 

 of the R. R. from the two small cuts containing the ferruginous greensand, 

 towards the deep one in which the gray lignito-gypseous clays appear, so as to 

 leave unexposed the line of contact between the two materials. There can, 

 however, be little doubt that the fossiliferous deposit is both over-and underlaid 

 by clays like those exposed in the deep cut at Vaiden ; for while, in the latter, 

 they occur at a level considerably above the fossiliferous strata, and are without 

 any perceptible dip, wells and cisterns dug at the station find, at a level far 

 below the latter, nothing but clays precisely similar to those in the deep cut — of 

 brown and gray tints, with rosettes and laminae of gypsum, frequently incrusted 

 with a yellow ferruginous mineral (Yellow Iron Ore, IT 224). In the middle 

 cut, the coarse, glauconitic, dark orange-colored, ferruginous sandstone forms a 

 pretty uniform stratum about 3 feet thick ; it is in this that the fossils are most 

 abundant. These are preserved as impressions and nuclei only, among which, 

 thus far, the following have been recognized : 

 Nautilus zigzag ! Yoluta peirosa, Con. ! 



Ostrea divarkata, Lea ! Dentalium. 



Venerkardfa rotunda, Lea ! Turritella vetusta, Lea ? 



Oardium Nicolldi, Con. ? * Terebra venusta, Lea V 



Avicula. Solarium. 



Underlying this rock, and in the cut adjoining northward, alternating with it, 

 there occurs a stiff amorphous clay, with sharp sand and some greensand grains, 

 also of a deep orange tint, and exhibiting traces of fossils. These materials also 

 contain, both in these cuts and in some further N., variously shaped ferruginous 

 concretions, whose shell is of limonite character, and filled usually with fine 

 yellow ochre. 



The peculiar deep tint of the heavy subsoil in several localities in this neigh- 

 borhood, (contrasting strongly with the unusually pale tint of the post-tertiary 

 surface loam commaly seen in S. Carroll), renders it evident that the red clay 

 above mentioned, has contributed to form the same. No other outcrops, how- 

 ever, seem to occur in the immediate neighborhood ; but cuts exhibiting similar 

 materials occur on the R. R., between Vaiden and Rockport. 



