CORRESPONDENCE. 
THE MippLEToON FORMATION OF TENNESSEE, MIssIssippr AND ALA- 
BAMA; WITH A NOTE ON THE FORMATIONS AT LAGRANGE, TENNESSEE. 
The party of geologists, spoken of on page 403, Vol. VIII, of this jour- 
nal, stopped in their travels, for a couple of days, at Oxford, the site of 
the University of Mississippi. The chief object was to inspect the fos- 
sil plants, collected in Mississippi and now in the museum of the Uni- 
versity. While there, observing, with the other members of the party, 
the many interesting specimens, I happened upon a lot of peculiar rock 
fragments, containing casts of fossils, which had a very familiar look 
and which I thought must have come from some one of certain locali- 
ties in Tennessee. I at once called Dr. Hilgard’s attention to them. 
“No,” he says, “they are from the Reeve’s locality in Tippah county of 
this state, and from the ‘clay sandstone’ found there.” He then referred 
us to page 112 of his “Agriculture and Geology of Mississippi,” where a 
section of the rocks at Reeve’s is given. “The clay sandstone is No. 2 of 
the section and from this the rock-fragments in question came.” Dr. 
Eug. Smith, who was standing near, recalled the fact that the same rock 
occurs in Alabama. 
All this was a revelation to me. I had known the rock for many years 
in Tennessee, and did not know of its occurrence elsewhere. With us, 
it is found at a number of localities. One is on the Memphis & Charles- 
ton railroad, at Middleton, in Hardeman county. An extensive outcrop 
of the rock is seen along the Bolivar and Purdy dirt road. It begins 
about eight miles from Bolivar and extends easterly two miles, or there- 
abouts, and nearly to Wade’s creek. This is also in Hardeman county, 
through which county, indeed, the formation outcrops in a belt running 
north-northeasterly and south-southwesterly. 
The rock referred to, is one of the most characteristic of a group of 
layers. It is about two feet thick, a sort of conglomerate, consisting of 
lumpy clay mixed with sand, and more or less consolidated into a bluish 
gray mottled mass. It contains also green, glauconitic grains and casts 
of fossils. Dr. Hilgard, in the section referred to, speaks of it as “clay- 
sandstone, spotted blue and yellow, with green grain dots.” The fossils 
he mentions as occurring in it are “Venericardia planicosta, Cardium 
nicolleti? Trochus, Ostrea, etc.” 
The particular rock described is one of a group, or formation, which 
is evidently the lowest division of the Eocene of this region. 
From the interest attached to this group and the very considerable 
extension it proves to have, it deserves adistinct name. Drs. Hilgard and 
Smith approving, I have named it the Middleton formation from the 
name of the town where its outcrop is intersected by the Memphis and 
Charleston railroad. 
Immediately to the east of the formation, in Tennessee, lie the Cre- 
taceous (Ripley) beds, while to the west are the Flatwoods (Porter's 
