that came in my way, and found that in very many of them there 
was a strong resemblance to the yellow clay, but I never again found 
as perfect a sample as the sugar tree mentioned. I often found 
grains of sand in the heart of rotten stumps and logs, where I 
could not see any possibility of its being carried in by insects. I 
have found gallons of rotten wood and sand mixed in the hollows 
of trees fifty feet or more above ground, where the rains in 
following down the bodies and limbs would trickle inside the 
hole, and be there retained till evaporated. This (finding of sand) 
is very often the case with white oak. Did the insects carry it 
there? Did the birds carry it there? Did the wind drift it 
there ? If the latter, then the rough outside bark would hold 
much of it in the crevices. But not a grain could I find there.^ 
Then there are the leaves of the trees, which by a careful inves- 
gation I found to be, when compressed, equal to the last growth 
of the mother tree, or in the life time of a tree the compressed 
leaf fall is equal to the wood volume of the tree above ground. 
The compressed annual leaf fall in our dense forest I found to be 
one thirtieth of an inch. The body of the trees will make the 
same volume as the compressed leaf fall of their life-time. (I 
don't claim this as mathematically exact, but it is approximate.) 
Thirty years will make one inch of compressed leaf fall. One 
thousand A-ears will make thirty-three (or more) inches. The 
bodies of the trees making as much more, we have sixty-six 
ches of decomposed trees and leaves for one thousand years — 
not allowing that any part will be reconsumed by the succeeding 
Then add the unknowable volume of dead buffalo, deer, 
bear, and other animals, together with the birds and insects, with 
cerement of all three during their lifetime, and we have a 
great volume of recently created matter, some of which must 
remain on the surface in some form. What form more probable 
