GEOLOGIC AGE AND GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION. 45 
ascends the slopes of the hills a number of feet (at some places as 
much as 40 feet) above the general level of the surrounding region. 
It occurs also in occasional small basins at the very top of the ridge, 
but is there mixed with loess and is not so sandy as it is in the low- 
lands. In many localities in the Cache and L'Anguille bottoms it 
rises to the surface and forms the soil over extensive areas. 
The buckshot clay is commonly a light-gray sandy clay, nearly 
impervious to water, containing an abundance of small nodules of 
limonite. There are usually several thousand of these little nodules 
to the cubic foot of earth. At many localities the clay is removed 
from the soil, or it never was present, so that the soil now consists of 
only the coarser sands and the limonite. These nodules lie in count- 
less thousands on the surface, giving a characteristic lumpy surface 
to the soil, which, where they so occur, is too poor to support even a 
scanty vegetation. Along the borders of some streams and ravines 
the nodules have weathered out to form layers a foot or more in 
thickness, notably at the mouth of England Creek (in the NE. | 
SW. \ sec. 19, T. 10 N., R. 4 E.) and in the valley of Big Creek 
about Jonesboro. 
In general, then, it may be said this limonitic hardpan, or buck- 
shot, is found over all the low country for 50 miles or more west of 
Crowleys Ridge. On the east of the ridge it is but a narrow fringe 
along its base below Poinsett County, but north of this county it 
spreads over the whole region as a subsoil, in places rising to the sur- 
face and varying in depth from 3 to 7 feet. It extends eastward to 
the alluvial bottoms of the St. Francis. Along Cache River in 
Greene and Clay counties much of the land is made up of these 
slashes or buckshot soil. 
This buckshot soil is used at Jonesboro, Gainesville, Paragould, 
and Rector for the manufacture of bricks, but it is ill suited for this 
purpose. The limonite is reduced to metallic iron in the parts of the 
kiln next to or near the fire, and this gives the bricks a black, spotted 
appearance, which contrasts unpleasantly with the color of the body 
of the brick. In the yards employing this brick earth the processes 
of molding are crude and none of the higher grades of machinery 
are in use; all the bricks are hand molded and none are re-pressed. 
REMARKS ON THE ANALYSES. 
Comparison of the analyses given in the table on pages 236-237 
will help to an understanding of the colors of the bricks made in the 
region. Clay for making bricks of good red color should contain 
iron; clay for brown bricks should contain manganese. The brick 
earths from Paragould and Jonesboro and one sample from Harris- 
burg contain most manganese; the others contain but a trace or none 
