DESCRIPTION OF COUNTIES. 71 



compact mass. Where exposed on the tops and sides of ridges they are 

 easily transported by the wind or rain, but lower down towards the bottom 

 of the section these sands become hard and firm and have the consistency of 

 a soft stone. 



• 2d. A lower division consisting of stratified, and in many places unstrati- 

 ified, sands, sandy clays, and clays. 



The stratified sands usually appear as thinly laminated material, having 

 alternate laminae of red or yellow and . white sand. Occasionally the white 

 laminae consist largely of a white sandy clay. These laminae are from a quar- 

 ter of an inch to half an inch in thickness. This deposit is always found un- 

 derlying the laminated ore, and when the ore is absent it is usually covered 

 by a thin stratum of ferruginous sandstone. This covering rarely exceeds 

 one or two inches in thickness. 



Closely associated with these stratified beds, and occupying the same hori- 

 zon, are deposits of unstratified mottled white and red sands — the red ap- 

 pearing as red blotches or spots upon the face of the white. 



The stratified sands are much broken, having been cut through by erosion, 

 and where this has taken place the mottled sands appear between the ends of 

 the beds and the eroded portion, forming, as it were, a cushion between 

 the broken ends and the water. These mottled sands have the same texture 

 as the stratified beds, and have the appearance of having originated from the 

 destruction or disintegration of the stratified material. The following sec- 

 tion will give an idea of the relations between these two deposits: 





Fig. 3. 



a, Overlying unstratified yellow sand, b, Thin deposit of laminated iron ore or ferruginous 



sandstone, c, Stratified red and white sand, d, Mottled unstratified sand. 



The thickness of this deposit varies in different localities. The total thick- 

 ness seen in the neighborhood of Queen City is about seventy feet. In the 

 cutting of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway near Hughes' Springs it 

 shows a thickness of only twelve feet. 



The next underlying bed appears to be a brown sand in some localities, and 

 so far as can be seen has no regular stratification, but is cross-bedded and 

 twisted in every direction. 



In the cutting at Hughes' Springs the deposit underlying the red and white 

 stratified sand is a black clay, thinly laminated with partings of dark gray 

 sand and containing occasional bowlders of concretionary iron ore. 



