ALTAMAHA GRIT REGION OF GEORGIA 17 



The term "pine-barrens" is not the most appropriate im- 

 aginable, and I am not sure that it is ever used in conversation 

 by the present inhabitants of South Georgia, who usually say 

 "piney woods" instead. But the term was undoubtedly used in 

 South Carolina and elsewhere a century or more ago, as is shown 

 by the writings of Catesby, Drayton, Elliott, F. A. Michaux, 

 and others, and it is so common in botanical literature that I 

 have retained it in this work. The name was doubtless given 

 by the early settlers through a misapprehension (owing to the 

 sparsity of trees), as was the case in the "barrens" of Kentucky, 

 about which Prof. Shaler says 1 : "It is an interesting his- 

 torical fact that the first settlers of the country deemed the 

 un timbered limestone lands of western Kentucky infertile, 

 and therefore gave to them the name of 'barrens.' They 

 were led to the conclusion that these lands were sterile by the 

 fact that in their previous experience the only untimbered 

 lands with which they had come in contact were unsuited to 

 agriculture." 



5. Chattahoochee. Lying just above the Vicksburgian 

 Oligocene in the geological column, and apparently separated 

 from it by a slight unconformity, 2 is the Chattahoochee for- 

 mation, the oldest member of the Upper Oligocene series. Its 

 area in Georgia is too small to be shown on the map, but it 

 crops out at the base of the Altamaha Grit (the next division) 

 at several points in Decatur County (particularly near the 

 corner of the state, 3 in a gorge near Faceville, 4 and at the 

 Lime Sink or Forest Falls 5 ), also at the "Rock House" (a 

 phenomenon similar to Forest Falls on a smaller scale) about 

 two miles east of Wenona in Dooly County, at Upper Seven 



1 Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. Surv. 12 *: 325. 1891. 



3 See Pumpelly, Am. Jour. Sci. III. 46: 445-447. Dec, 1893; Foerste, 

 Am. Jour. Sci. III. 48: 41-54. July, 1894; Vaughan, Science II. 12: 

 873-875- Dec. 7, 1900. 



3 Bull. Torrey Club 32: 149, 150. 1905. 



4 Foerste, Am. Jour. Sci. III. 48: 51-54. 1894; McCallie, Bull. Geol. 

 Surv. Ga. 5: 51. 1896. 



5 Bull. Torrey Club 30: 289-290. 1903. See also the papers by 

 Foerste and McCallie just cited. 



