316 THE IRON ORE DISTRICT OF EAST TEXAS. 



The existence of other salines at different localities in Eastern Texas has 

 been noticed several times in the publications of this Survey and of those 

 which have preceded it, as well as elsewhere. 



The principal salines so far described in East Texas are: 



Grand Saline, Van Zandt County. 



Steen Saline, Smith County. 



Brooks Saline, Smith County. 



Saline, Anderson County. 



Saline, Freestone County, two miles east of Butler. 



The conditions surrounding these salines are very nearly the same in all in- 

 stances. There is generally a depression surrounded by wooded hills in which 

 are found limestones of white or gray color. The depression is sometimes 

 marshy, or during the winter months holds a body of water of greater or less 

 extent, which evaporates as the summer approaches and leaves an incrusta- 

 tion of salt on the ground. 



The limestones are white to grey in color, and are sometimes quite siliceous, 

 and sometimes they are glauconitic. They are characterized especially by 

 the seams of calcite they contain, and are proved by their fossil contents to 

 be the equivalents of the Ripley group (Cretaceous) of Mississippi. The 

 underlying clays belong to the Ponderosa Marls, numbers of this oyster being 

 found at different places in them. 



Surrounding these salines on every side we find strata of Tertiary age, and 

 the salines themselves are therefore in the nature of Cretaceous inliers in that 

 formation. They represent islands in the Tertiary sea formed by projecting 

 eminences of the underlying strata of Cretaceous age. 



These salines occur also in Louisiana, where they have been studied by E. 

 W. Hilgard and F. V. Hopkins.* -'The only known exposures of the lime- 

 stones are at Winfield and near Chicot, in St. Landry's parish. The same 

 strata, however, come very near the surface at all the various salt wells in 

 Bienville and Winn parishes, and is the formation to which the sulphur of 

 Calcasieu and the rock salt of Petit Anse belong." 



Hilgard regards the series of Cretaceous inliers "which traverse Louisiana 

 from the head of Lake Bistenau in a south southeast direction, terminating 

 probably in the great rock salt mass of Petit Anse" as representing "summits 

 of an (more or less interrupted) ancient ridge, a kind of backbone to the State 

 of Louisiana, whose resistance to denudation has measurably influenced the 

 nature and conformation of subsequent deposits."! The connection between 

 these salines and the strata containing them and the deposits of oil, sulphur, 

 and gypsum existing in southwestern Louisiana is well worthy of notice. 



* First Annual Report Geological Survey of Louisiana, F. Y. Hopkins, M. L\, p. 206. 

 f Geol. Hist, of the Gulf of Mexico, A. J. S.. vol. 2, Dec. 1871, pp. 209, 210. 



