80 GEOLOGICAL RECONNOISSANCE 
Specimens of soils were collected from this county, on the farm of Albert 
Dugger, near the mouth of the Dry fork of Clear creek. The growth is 
black-jack and hickory, with an undergrowth of sumach and hazel. This 
soil will average about 40 bushels of corn, and 25 bushels of oats to the 
acre. 
On the divide between the Buffalo fork and the waters of the Dry fork of 
Clear creek, the surface is strewed with a sharp chert gravel, overlying a 
pinkish limestone, occupying probably the place of the marble rock of Ma- 
rion and Carroll counties. Limestones of a similar character reappear in 
the descent of the ridge, towards the waters of the Dry fork, associated with 
a semi-oolitic variety of calciferous sand rock, perhaps of silurian date. 
I have, as yet, found no conclusive evidence to enable me to form a de- 
cided opinion as to the age of the marble limestones of north-west Arkan- 
sas ; but if they should, by subsequent observations, prove to be the repre- 
sentative of the Onondaga limestone of the New York system, then it is 
doubtful, whether there are any rocks belonging to the upper silurian divi- 
sion in the western part of Searcy county, as the marble formation seems 
to rest immediately on rocks of the lower silurian period. 
Some sandstone is interstratified with the limestones of the Dry fork of 
Clear creek; but these sandstones are older than the productal sandstone 
of Burrowsville, in Van Buren county. 
The pink limestones are more earthy than the limestones occupying the 
same geological horizon in the central portion of Van Buren county. 
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