332 BOTANY AND PALAEONTOLOGY 



The prairies of Carrollton County, though reputed as being more fertile 

 than those of Marion and Fulton counties, have nearly the same average 

 produce. "When the season is dry, they give no more than thirty-five 

 bushels of corn per acre; in favorable seasons, fifty to sixty bushels. 

 Fifteen bushels of wheat is said to be the average. All the prairies of 

 which the soil is not too compact and clayey, give good crops of oats. 

 Last year (1859), oats were ruined everywhere except on the prairies. 



The ridge dividing Crooked Creek from Long Creek is formed of Sub- 

 carboniferous Sandstone. As this sandstone is not cut by any banks of 

 limestone, it afforded me a good opportunity of noting the species of plants 

 pertaining to this formation, and which were not found on the limestone. 

 The number of these species is not great, and they have been marked 

 already. It is especially the Chincapin, the Black Gum, and the Spanish 

 Oak, for the trees, with a greater abundance of the Black Oak, the Scarlet 

 Oak, and the Mockernut. For the shrubs : the Fackleberry, and the species 

 of herbaceous plants enumerated, page 62. 



Long Creek has fertile bottoms, — a soil resulting from the decomposition 

 of sandstone, chert, and limestone rocks, alternately exposed along its 

 banks.* It is covered with species of trees characteristic of both limestone 

 and sandstone formations. Thus it has the Black Gum, the Sweet Gum, 

 which I saw there for the first time in Arkansas, and which becomes very 

 common in the sandy bottoms of the south of Arkansas, the Overcup Oak, 

 the Chestnut, the Red, the White, and the Spanish Oaks, the Mockernut, 

 the Elm, &c. The Papaw and the Elder make here also their first appear- 

 ance, becoming common further south. This land produces, on an aver- 

 age, sixty bushels of corn to the acre, or twenty bushels of wheat. It is 

 not good for oats, but excellent for hay. It is rather light and permeable — 

 a quality which it owes to the detritus of sandstone. 



From Long Creek to King's River, along the Bentonville Koad, there is 

 a succession of low hills, formed of alternate strata of cherty limestone and 

 of sandstone, which are generally cultivated, except on some of the most 

 rocky and dry places. The highest ridges are still covered with beautiful 

 prairies of the same nature, same fertility, and with the same vegetation as 

 the Huzza Prairie. With the shrubs before mentioned, I find here the 

 bristly Rose Acacia, forming with the Sumach dense thickets, which vary 

 pleasantly the monotony of these plains. It is difficult to account for the 

 difference in the amount of produce between these and the Huzza Prairie. 

 From the reports received, they give, on an average, about thirty-five 

 bushels of corn, or twenty of wheat, per acre. This difference is most pro- 

 bably due to the thinness of the fertile soil in some parts of the prairies of 



* Near Carrollton, on one side of the creek, the bank, at its base, is formed of chert, in the 

 middle of hard, compact limestone, and of chert again at the top. On the other side, the base is 

 chert, and the upper part is conglomerate sandstone. 



