CHAP. XXV. J GEOLOGY. 73 



yers, the bench has grown weaker than the bar, and the author 

 ity of judicial decisions has been impaired. Hence the increased 

 number of appeals to the Supreme Court of the state now sitting 

 at Tuscaloosa. Yet, in spite of this augmentation of business, 

 the income of the judges in this court also has been lowered from 

 3000 to 2500 dollars ; although lawyers in good practice in Mo 

 bile have been known to make 10,000 or 14,000 dollars a year. 

 It is by no means uncommon, therefore, for one who has a large 

 family, to give up the bench and return to the bar ; but, in that 

 case, the title of Judge is still given to him by courtesy, and is 

 much prized, especially by northern men, who are willing to 

 make a sacrifice for this honor, by serving a few years on the 

 bench and then retiring from it. 



I have before alluded to the deep ravines recently cut through 

 incoherent strata in Georgia, after the natural wood has been 

 felled.* One of these modern gulleys may now be seen intersect 

 ing most inconveniently the main street of Tuscaloosa, and sev 

 eral torrents are cutting their way backward through the &quot; cre 

 taceous&quot; clay, sand, and gravel of the hill on which the Capitol 

 stands. They even threaten in a few years to undermine that 

 edifice. I had observed other recent ravines, from seventy to 

 eighty feet deep, in the Eocene strata between Macon and Clarkes- 

 ville (Alabama), where the forest had been felled a few years 

 before. 



On my way back from Tuscaloosa to Mobile, I had a good 

 opportunity of examining the geological structure of the country, 

 seeing various sections, first of the cretaceous, and then lower 

 down of the tertiary strata. The great beds of gravel and sand 

 above alluded to, forming the inferior part of the cretaceous series, 

 might from their want of consolidation, be mistaken for much 

 newer deposits, if their position on the Tombeckbee, as well as 

 on the Alabama River at Montgomery, were not perfectly clear. 

 They pass beneath the great marlite formation, full of cretaceous 

 shells, which gives rise to the prairie soils before described,! as 

 nearly destitute of natural wood, and crossing Alabama in an 

 east and west direction. These I examined at Erie, at Demo- 

 * Ante, p. 28. * Ante, p. 41. 



