458 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



[August 



if this prevailing and almost universal 

 course of unremitting and exhausting til- 

 lage is continued, a future time will come, 

 however remote it may be, when this re- 

 gion will be reduced to a condition as bar- 

 ren and hopeless, as it has been, and is most- 

 ly still, of unsurpassed value for production. 

 It seems difficult for a proprietor to yield 

 the fond belief in the inexhaustible fertility 

 of his land; and with many a sufficient 

 ground for this reliance is the fact of the 

 rich black soil being' (in some places) three 

 or four feet, or more, in depth, and that til- 

 lage has not yet touched more than the up- 

 per few inches. And though it is generally 

 admitted that the average production of the 

 older fields has much diminished, in conse- 

 quence of the frequent occurrence of short 

 crops, these failures are ascribed not to the 

 general and remote cause of continued til- 

 lage, and generally under the same crop, 

 but to such immediate transient causes as 

 bad seasons, depredations of insects, and 

 some of the many diseases of cotton. The 

 latter causes of decreased production will 

 be again considered in connection with the 

 prevailing errors of continued and unchang- 

 ed cropping. 



There are some other remarkable pecu- 

 liarities of the lands of this region, which 

 will now be mentioned. The consideration 

 of the geological formation, or the ancient 

 changes produced by such causes, will serve 

 to explain the most important and strange 

 of the present agricultural features of this 

 region. 



The great bed of lime-rock, which every- 

 where underlies the soils and upper earth of 

 this region, is of the cretaceous formation, 

 of the same geological age, and very like in 

 characters, to the chalk of Europe. The 

 fossil remains are of animals of that epoch.* 

 In its great depth, and also the general 

 chemical constitution, this bed is similar to 

 the chalk. But this is more impure, (or 



* The only fossils I saw are exogyna costatn. 



and ostrea 11 which are common on the 



bald prairies and are both remarkably thick, 

 massive and hard shells. In other places, there 

 are many other shells of the cretaceous beds. 



contains less of carbonate of lime — ) and 

 it is not recognized as chalk by geologists, 

 who deny that there is any chalk in America. 

 This bed, in southern Alabama, is from 400 

 to more than 800 feet thick, as has been 

 often ascertained in . the different borings for 

 the water confined beneath.* This great bed 

 of marine deposition, which was the bottom of 

 the then ocean in the cretaceous age, was 

 subsequently upheaved, by volcanic or other 

 forces acting under the earth, to its present 

 elevation, and the northern side much the 

 highest. At .a later time, the great flood, 

 coming from the north-west, which, else- 

 where and on all the Atlantic slope, has 

 left so many evidences of its violent and de- 

 structive passage and great effects — which 

 deposited its heavier and earliest dropped 

 burden of poor sand so generally over lower 

 Virginia, North Carolina and South Caro- 

 lina — here, in a later and more tranquil 

 state of the overflowing waters, has de- 

 posited over the whole surface of the rock, 

 the lighter and longer-borne sediment of 

 fine and pure clay, which makes the much 

 greater proportion of all the present soils 

 and subsoils, and which upper beds are more 

 or less altered by intermixture with the up- 

 torn foundation of soft calcareous rock, or 

 the previously abraded and re-deposited, 

 and again siirred-up portions thereof. But 

 previo'JS to-this final deposition of the fine 

 sediment of clay, the earlier and most vio- 

 lent currents of the great descending flood 

 had operated to loosen, tear aw\ay, and partly 

 to carry off, to greater or less distances, much 

 of the higher and softer parts of the origi- 

 nal thickness of the cretaceous bed, and to 

 leave its reduced new surface with all the 

 great irregularities of outline which now 

 appears wherever the surface is exposed to 

 view by excavation. Along the newly made 

 cut for the railroad, near Union Town, 

 through a poor "post-oak" ridge, (and 

 where the sections of the strata could be 

 best seen,) the profile was of the general 

 character or appearance roughly represented 

 on the next page : 



* Prof. Tnomey supposes the thickness to be 

 full 1000 feet. 



