330 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [H720, 721 



character. The curative action exerted by the large Spring, when used as a 

 bath, are probably owing more to the irritating effect on the skin of the fine 

 sharp sand with which the body is scoured as it were, and the reaction following 

 the cold bath (its constant temperature being 63.5 deg. Fahr.), than to the 

 medicinal qualities of the mineral ingredients. 



It has been claimed that these springs prove the practicability of artesian 

 wells in the region of their occurrence. It unquestionably proves that in that 

 neighborhood, such may be obtained at the same level, i. e., in deep valleys, but 

 the water of the streams so obtained could not rise higher than the level of the 

 basin of the Franklin Spring, which is precisely that at which, at present, water 

 is obtained in wells on the ridges. It is only, like Hale's well (IT 318) an 

 indication of a favorable disposition of the strata at that point. 



720. Where the hard white sandstones of the Grand Gulf Group 

 prevail, as in some parts of the western Homochitto hills, the Back- 

 bone, and in N. E. portion of Claiborne county, and adjoing parts 

 of Copiah and Hinds, springs are generally more abundant, and 

 their water purer, than where the materials of the strata are soft. 

 In S. W. Hinds, however, we soon find a change in the composition 

 of the waters, in which the sulphates become predominant ; they 

 gradually assume the character of the water of Cooper's Wells. 



THE CENTRAL PRAIRIE REGION. 



Comprising, essentially, the portions underlaid by the calcareous Tertiary (see 

 map), of the counties of Warren, Yazoo, Madison, Hinds, Rankin, Scott, 

 Smith, Jasper. Newton, Clarke and Wayne. 



721. The prairies characterizing the region I thus designate, are 

 not generally the prevalent feature of its surface — not even to the 

 extent to which this is the case in the North eastern Prairie Region 

 (H527 to 500). They do not anywhere form such continuous or 

 large bodies of land, as we find them occupying on the surface of 

 the country underlaid by the Cretaceous formation, nor is the 

 surface of the country so generally level or gently undulating. 



The black prairie soil occurs in patches, of a few acres to several 

 thousands in extent, intervening between elevated ridges occupied, 

 either by the Orange Sand formation and its peculiar soils, or by 

 soils derived essentially from the materials of the clayey, non- 

 calcareous or gypseous stages of the Tertiary — forming, in the 

 western portion of the belt, the lighter soils of the " Gypseous 

 Prairie " (1215 ; 723, ff.) ; in the eastern, the heavy, intractable 

 soils of the "Hogbed " or " Hogwallow Prairie " (1746, ff.). Both 

 of these occupy, in general, positions above any contiguous " Black 

 Prairie ", the latter being in the more hilly portions of the region, 

 confined to the slopes and bottoms of the streams, and essentially 

 derived, as may be inferred, from the calcareous, fossiliferous beds 

 of the Tertiary — for which reason they are often, in contradistinc- 

 tion to the other soils above mentioned, designated as " Shell 

 Prairies ", from the great abundance in which fossil shells, especially 



