68 GEOLOGICAL RECONNOISSANCE 
the cliffs in the foreground of this landscape, is part of the conglomerate 
and millstone grit formation that intervenes between the overlying coal 
measures proper, and the underlying subcarboniferous limestone. 
When water-worn pebbles are disseminated through such sandstones, 
subordinate to the coal measures, they have received the name of conglo- 
merates or pebbly sandstones ; when pebbles are absent, and the rock con- 
stitutes merely a coarse-textured sandstone, it is called millstone grit. 
Both these varieties occur in White county, along the escarpments of Lit- 
tle Red river, which attain a thickness of 150 to 200 feet, imparting wild 
and romantic scenery to the country, for many miles along the bank of 
this stream. They constitute, also, the nucleus of the backbone ridge that 
runs from the Bee rock to Patterson’s mill. At the latter locality, the 
impression of a peculiar extinct plant, characteristic of the early carboni- 
ferous era, known as the stigmaria ficoides, was discovered, imbedded in 
the sandstone, which would prove conclusively the age of this sandstone 
formation, if other evidence were wanting. 
A particle of gold, the size of a flaxseed, is said to have been pumped 
up with the sand from the bed of Little Red river, at Patterson’s mill. 
Even if this is correct information, it is not probable that quantities of 
this metal, sufficient to pay for the extraction, could be washed out of the 
sands of Tilia Red river, since it does not flow, along any part of its 
course, over rocks such as have yielded profitable quantities of this pre- 
cious metal in other countries. 
The dip of these sandstones on this part of Little Red river, is 14 deg. 
to 2 deg. to the south, or a little west of south. The base of this forma- 
tion, at this point, is schistose in its structure, i. e., thin bedded, becoming, 
however, more solid and massive in its upper part. 
Some segregations of iron ore occur about 10 feet above the water of 
Little Red river, near the mill, but they are, here, too siliceous to constitute 
a good quality of ore for the manufacture of iron. 
Three miles north-west of Searcy, at a “bald point,” in the vicinity of 
the widow Gilbert’s farm, sixty feet of shaly strata are exposed, dark or 
nearly black, in its lower part, and reddish yellow and ferruginous towards 
the top. This shale includes numerous segregations of carbonate of iron 
and carbonate of lime; the latter containing several fossil marine shells, 
amongst which the nautilus ferratus was discovered, a species which 
occurs in the ferruginous shales of Nolin, in Edmonson county, Ky. 
Until levels are run, which it is contemplated doing hereafter, during 
the progress of the detailed surveys in the individual counties, it is difficult 
to pronounce positively on the relative geological position of these shales, 
with reference to the sandstones of the Bee rock; but, judging from the 
