OF ARKANSAS. 329 



and the number of species of this genus belonging to Arkansas, the rocky 

 and nevertheless fertile and warm soil of the so-called Limestone barrens of 

 Fulton, Carroll, Marion, and other counties, permit the inference that the 

 culture of the grape would be most successful in these counties.* Never- 

 theless, I have not seen a single grape vine around the farm-buildings. 

 Do the planters consider the grape as a useless accessory to their more 

 substantial food ? As a diet, grapes belong to the most wholesome fruits, 

 especially in a warm country, and just at the season when they are ripen- 

 ing. In the hot season of the fall, they do for the body what the 

 bitter sap of the Dandelion, the Cress, and other weeds may do in the 

 spring. They purify the blood and the whole system by their antibilious, 

 febrifuge, and scorbutic properties, and fortify it against the influences of 

 the coming winter. It is a custom for sickly and feeble people of some 

 countries of Southern Europe to go to a grape cure, as we go here to a 

 water-cure establishment. For two or three weeks they eat nothing but 

 full ripe grapes in abundance. Most beneficial results are obtained from 

 this usage. Planting grapes upon the limestone of the counties of North 

 Arkansas would thus at once improve the health of every family, and pre- 

 pare for the future a more extensive culture for wine-making. Such a 

 culture has become the most remunerative of all on the limestone hills of 

 the Ohio Eiver, which, by the geological nature of the soil, resemble the 

 hills of Arkansas, but of which the climatic situation is far less favorable. 



From the top of the Limestone Cliffs of the North Fork of White River, 

 in Fulton County, the view from the hills on both sides of the river is 

 truly beautiful. The country all around looks like an undulating sea of 

 green forests, alternating with small prairies which appear like clearings, 

 or patches of cultivated fields. These high limestone prairies or barrens 

 are now becoming more extensive and more fertile. After passing the 

 North Fork and some woody rocky ridges of cherty limestone we came to 

 the Eap and Talbot barrens, on the eastern boundaries of Marion County, f 

 A part of these barrens are well cultivated, and were, at the time we passed 

 them, covered with fields of corn. "Where the soil is thick enough it 

 produces annually forty to fifty bushels of corn an acre, and is good for 

 tobacco. It is about the same kind of soil as that of the half prairies of 

 eastern Fulton. It is also too strong for wheat, and would require to be 

 drained, or at least deeply ploughed, to show its full value. Naturally 



* I have seen, in Fulton County, the Muscatine Grape growing finely in the middle of dry 

 rocky beds of the torrents, and also on ridges covered with broken pieces of rock, where no other 

 trace of vegetation was seen. 



f See Geology of Marion County, 1st volume of this Report, pages 45 and 224. The differ- 

 ence in the vegetation of the Silurian and of the Subcarboniferous cherty limestone is not 

 appreciable. At least I could not remark any. It may be that a more detailed exploration 

 would permit us to ascertain some species peculiar to each formation. 



