914 GEOLOGICAL RECONNOISSANCE 
creek, six miles from the mouth, and have proved of exccllent quality for 
corn. — 
The coarse-grained saccharoidal sandstone (/) in the vertical section of 
the rocks in Lawrence county is mostly of a dark red color, but locally 
very white, and occasionally ornamented with buff-colored bands. This 
sandstone makes its appearance in the south-eastern part of the county, 
near Mr. Campbell’s, caps the hills on Big creek (Williams creek), four 
miles south of the zinc farnace at Calamine, and extends in a north-west 
course through “ Evening Shade,” or Hookram, as it is usually called, and 
continues on through Fulton and Marion counties; universally covered 
with a luxuriant growth of yellow pine. 
The orange sand (2) and the water-worn gravel bed (j) were seen in 
the vicinity of Powhatan, the former corresponds to the ferruginous sand 
belonging to the quarternary in Greene and Randolph counties. The 
western limits of these two deposits is somewhere near range 4 west, 
since I was not able to discover either it or the gravel bed west of that 
line; in fact, I was not able to detect the ferruginous sand west of the line 
between ranges three and four. 
At Powhatan the citizens were extremely anxious to know if stone coal 
did not exist close by, as fragments had been found on the river sand-bars, 
which, it was supposed, had been broken from the main deposit and trans- 
ported by the water. For their information, I may here state, that the true 
coal-bearing rocks do not exist in the counties through which Black 
river fiows; nor yet in Greene county, where some of its tributaries take 
their rise; hence there is no probability of discovering beds of bituminous 
coal; but there are beds of lignite amongst the quarternary deposits of this 
latter county, some of which has very much the appearance of coal. I 
am disposed, however, to think that the lumps of coal found on the sand- 
bars, were most likely dropped from the steamboats navigating the river. 
, 
Agriculture. 
The upland soils of Lawrence county, west of Black river, are derived 
chiefly from the cherty and earthy magnesian limestones of the lower 
silurian period, and its overlying sandstones. Soils derived from the 
quarternary are limited to some of the ridges bordering on Black river, 
east of range four. The soils selected in this county, for analysis, were 
collected on section 15, township 17 north, range 2 west, overlying and 
derived from the buff, earthy, magnesian limestones of the lower silurian 
system. 
East of Black river the soils are essentially alluvial, like those of the 
