115 



of the neighborhood to belong to the real coal formation. The 

 ■existence of lignite in any part of Louisiana, as far as it has come 

 under my o b oo i f a tion, doee not indicate any particular formation 

 proper to the State, but it is like the iron stone a mere accidental 

 •nent of the Southern diluvial deposit. 



From Mount Lebanon to Sparta and from Sparta to within seven 

 miles of Ringgold the surface is composed of pure sand, without 

 intermixture of pebbles. About a mile this side of Rayburn's place 

 the iron stone makes its appearance and the red water washed hills 

 form the characteristic topographical features of the country. A 

 short distance from Four Mile bayou there is a small shallovr branch, 

 strewed over with gravel, iron stone and conglommerate, where I 

 found on the surface a considerable number of oyster shells (Ostrea 

 Alabamiensis in a natural state and most of them in a good state 

 reservation, being but slightly water-washed. These fossil shells 

 belong to the Claiborne strata of the tertiary period, which, in 

 Louisiana, has no equivalent representative. It is, therefore, only 

 an adventitious fossil brought to the locality where it is found by 

 swift water currents or ice masses drifting from the mountains in 

 Arkansas. 



The Southern diluvial deposit is here distinguished by the pecu- 

 liarity that in many prominent localities the gravel beds are either 

 intermixed or underlie irregular layers of argillaceous iron stone or 

 ferruginous sandstone, which imparts the deep red color to the sub- 

 soiL The gravel consists mostly of opaque quartz, hornstone and 

 jasper, intermixed near Minden with iron gerdes and silicified wood, 

 and in De Soto parish with leaf impressions in ferruginous sand- 

 stone, and in Union with slabs of shale of small size. 



The gravel of the northwest Louisiana diluvial deposit is not, 

 properly speaking, fossiliferons. No silicified sporifers or producta, 

 no encrinitic stems are here found; in which respect it differs so 

 much from the diluvial gravel of East Rapides; East Feliciana, 

 it Baton Rouge, Washington and St. Helena, which is strictly fos- 

 siliferons, and contains scattered rocks of conglomerates and bogue 

 iron, but no argillaceous iron stone and ferruginous sandstone. 



The difference of the gravel of the two regions of country above 

 indicated, suggests the idea that the deposit of the two locations 

 must have been derived from different mountain ranges. To solve 



