90

pottery at Athens, in Henderson County. The clay used occurs in the town, and the articles manufactured are fire brick, tiles, sewer pipes, jugs, etc. The names of the companies operating are The Texas Fire Brick and Tile Company, and The Southern Pottery, Tile, and Brick Company. The bed of clay used varies from twelve to eighteen feet thick. It is underlaid by pure white siliceous sand and overlaid by a red sandy clay. The pottery clay is of a very light gray color, becoming almost white when dry. It is massive and exceedingly plastic. The works produce daily 10,000 fire brick and 2000 six-inch sewer pipe, besides pipe of other sizes. The Southern Pottery, Tile, and Brick Company produce ware equal to a cubic content of 1000 gallons daily, consisting mostly of jugs, pots, and earthenware dishes. Good clays are also found just outside of Jefferson, Marion County, on the road to Kellyville; on Town Creek, near Rusk, Cherokee County, and six miles south of the town, besides in many other parts of the timber region.

The adaptability of the great beds of clay in the lower part of the Fayette series for economic purposes can not be determined until further tests have been made, but there is little doubt that many of them will prove of great value, as they are often remarkably free from iron. Clays suitable for the manufacture of brick are of universal distribution in Eastern Texas, and there is scarcely a town in that region that can not and does not make brick from material obtained in its immediate neighberhood. In places the clay contains a certain admixture of sand, suiting it for the manufacture of a brick which, though not so beautiful as some others, is remarkably durable. Such bricks are of a deep red color, and often contain black spots.

Sands suitable for the manufacture of glass are found in some places in East Texas. Three miles north of Jacksonville, in Cherokee County, on the line of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, are found large quantities of a pure white siliceous sand. Such sand is also found underlying the clay bed at Athens, and elsewhere. The sand beds of Texas are, however, so far as I know them, generally too much impregnated with iron, either in the shape of oxide, iron pyrites, or of glauconite, to be of value for glass making. The presence of clay in most of them is also injurious. Consequently it is only in a few places, like those just mentioned, that it occurs in an available state.

Though lime is almost universally distributed through the beds underlying East Texas, it is generally in such small quantities and so finely disseminated