44 THE CLAYS OF ARKANSAS. 
portions of the loess, for they contain more or less gravel and sand, 
derived from the neighboring hills. 
The limonitic buckshot lands, as has already been stated, are 
widely distributed, for, owing to the method of their formation, they 
are liable to be made wherever the conditions indicated exist. There- 
fore the buckshot are not confined to clays of any particular age. 
The conditions most favorable for their formation, however, as might 
be expected, have existed and still exist in the widespread flat Ter- 
tiary and post-Tertiary portions of the State, and in the hardpan 
of the prairie region. 
The region between Crowleys Ridge and White River is diversified 
with prairie and wooded lowlands and traversed by low ridges which 
have a general north-south trend parallel to the drainage lines. 
Though they stand only from 5 to 15 feet above the general level, 
they nevertheless constitute a remarkable topographic feature. On 
these ridges several towns and villages are located — Surrounded Hill, 
Brinkley, Wheatley, and Palestine, for example. 
The geology of these low divides is not positively made out. The 
soils which usually cap them are entirely different from those which 
form the surface of the distinctively prairie region. It is commonly 
a yellowish-brown loam resembling the loess soils of Crowleys Ridge, 
but it is not an alluvium. Beneath it are the buckshot clays, as is 
shown in well sections. Extensive deposits of this loam occur in 
portions of sees. 10, 11, 14, 15, and 22, T. 3 N., R. 2 W. The ridge 
extends away toward Clarendon, but disappears in the pine flats a 
few miles south. 
The buckshot clays cover nearly all the country contiguous to and 
west of Crowleys Ridge. They also form a narrow belt along the 
eastern edge of the ridge south of Poinsett County; but this eastern 
belt entirely disappears at places in the southern portion of the ridge. 
These clays have been noted at but few places in the country east of 
St. Francis River, where the lands are composed mainly of alluvium, 
and are in great part subject to periodic overflows. In the region 
west of the ridge these clays constitute all the second bottoms 
along L'Anguille, Cache, and White rivers, and at many places along 
those streams they appear from beneath the alluvium. This state- 
ment holds also for the White River region south of the Bald Knob 
and Memphis branch of the Iron Mountain and Southern Railway. 
The entire prairie region of St. Francis, Cross, and Poinsett counties 
is underlain by this soil. Farther west, in Woodruff, Monroe, Prairie, 
and Lonoke counties, it is commonly observed either in the washes 
on the prairies or in the " post-oak slashes" of that region, and is 
penetrated in all well sections. All the post-oak regions of the Crow- 
leys Ridge area are characterized by soil of this sort. In some local- 
ities, as at Forrest City, Marianna, Jonesboro, and Paragould, it 
