FAULKNER COUNTY, 95 
where the shale talus has been broken up by long exposure to perco- 
lating waters. 
Some of these clays are available for making rough pottery, such as 
jugs, crocks, and churns, or for making vitrified bricks or sewer pipes. 
The deposits are generally too small, however, to be of much impor- 
tance. 
LIMONITIC BUCKSHOT CLAYS. 
The ordinary buckshot clay — that is, the clay containing small 
nodules or concretions of iron — occurs over half of Faulkner County. 
It is most abundant in the valleys and over the flat portions of the 
uplands of the county, and is least abundant on the crests of sharp 
ridges and in the alluvial bottoms of the Arkansas. Where it is near 
the sluggish bayous, and is overflowed for many days and even weeks 
each }^ear, waters charged with organic matter have leached the iron 
from its upper portion, leaving it in places a clean, white potter's 
clay. This same process, operating on a minor scale, has produced 
the yellowish or ash-colored loam that forms the surface soil over a, 
large portion of the county. From this loam most of the bricks of 
Faulkner County are made. 
Beneath this more earthy surface there is generally an irregular bed 
or band of nodules of limonite iron that renders the clay difficult to 
manipulate, especially when the bricks are handmade, and produces 
the dark chocolate and spotted color so common in bricks from such 
soils. 
The limonitic buckshot clay is so widely distributed in Faulkner 
County that it may be said to form the agricultural soil of three- 
fourths of the county. It is doubtless thickest in the valleys, in 
nearly all of which it covers large areas. It is in the " slashes," how- 
ever, or wherever the ground is flat enough to prevent quick drainage, 
that it occurs in its most characteristic forms. 
Throughout the Cypress Valley, from the Arkansas bottoms to the 
eastern border of the county, the buckshot limonitic clays are con- 
cealed only by the thin surface soil, which is in reality but a part of 
the blanket of clay soil that covers the whole region. The same is 
true of all the other valleys of the county, but especial^ of those in 
which there is slash land, or over which the drainage is sluggish. 
About Conway, Greenbriar, Holland, Enolia, and Amsteadville these 
clays are abundant, and are everywhere available for making such 
bricks as arc usually made of the limonitic clays. 
LEACHED CLAYS. 
The leached clays are but one phase of the buckshot clays, being 
the upper soils from which the iron has been removed by acidulated 
waters. As a rule the longer the water stands on the ground the 
