338 BOTANY AND PALEONTOLOGY 



surrounding the prairies, where they find a dry, light soil, mostly red 

 upland, or who even prefer settling on the top of the hills of the Millstone 

 Grit. It does not appear that any fair trial of culture has been made on 

 the prairies of this section. By a fair trial, I mean not only the deep 

 ploughing of the subsoil, but the drainage also. The tenacity of the soil 

 may be easily remedied by the addition of manure, and if it is not at hand, 

 of sand, most abundant on all the declivities of the hills surrounding the 

 prairies. Generally, the proprietors know that the soil can be rendered 

 productive ; but they find that the result would not repay the cost and 

 trouble. Moreover, the prairies are well enough as excellent pastures for 

 their cattle. These reasons may suffice at present ; but when the popula- 

 tion of "Western Arkansas increases industry will yet derive a great deal 

 more advantage from these plains. 



Near the limits of Sebastian and Franklin Counties, between Vache- 

 grasse Creek, Big Creek, and Doctor's Creek, a series of low hills, formed 

 of the red shales, constitutes the water-shed. It is the same red upland as 

 at Lafayette, and it has the same fertility. It is here mostly cultivated for 

 cotton, and has large plantations. Its average produce is one thousand 

 pounds of cotton per acre. For corn it is not quite as good, producing 

 only an average of about thirty bushels an acre ; but better for wheat, 

 twenty, bushels being the average, and especially for oats. As it receives 

 part of its mineral elements from the Millstone Grit, it is a light, somewhat 

 sandy soil, which, at least from its appearance, cannot preserve for a long 

 time its productive powers. This soil would be much improved by alter- 

 nation of heavy grains, or of cotton with oats, cultivated only to be turned 

 in as manure. 



Grand Prairie of Franklin County is underlaid by ferruginous black 

 shales, or sometimes by the fireclay of the coal. A few low hills are still 

 left in the middle of it, with the original stratification of the measures to 

 which they belong, a succession of shales and fireclay. Some hills like 

 these, but more abrupt and higher, look like Indian mounds, on the flat 

 surface of Long Prairie, in Sebastian County. Neither humidity nor a 

 peculiar nature of the ground can account for the barrenness of these hills, 

 on which there only grows the same species of herbaceous plants as those 

 of the prairies. In a case like this, the growth of trees has probably been 

 prevented by the annual fire of the prairies. There is no possibility to 

 explain the phenomenon in any other manner. 



The bottoms of Hurricane Creek, in the southern part of Franklin 

 County, gave us the first insight into the vegetation of the extensive flats or 

 marshy bottoms which border all the rivers in the south of Arkansas. At 

 this place, the characteristic trees are especially the Water Oak, the Willow 

 Oak, which I see for the first time, but which becomes extremely common 

 the more we advance to the southward. Like the former, it grows to a 



