“bloom.” What was their astonishment to receive from Professor Wharton the report that their coal was still worthless, but that their bloom was phosphate rock, analyzing over 70 per cent. This was in December, 1893, and like the news of William Tell in Switzerland, of old, “From hill to hill the summons flew,” and the whole country went phosphate and option mad. Lack of transportation and timidity of capital, coupled with the large amount of territory occupied by the deposit and the numerous parties holding properties caused the development to be spasmodic and comparatively small and scattered, and in consequence the price soon fell from $4.25 per ton f. o. b. Aetna, which was the first sale, made by the old Southwestern Phosphate Co., to $2.25 per ton, which was the price at which blue rock guaranteed 65 per cent was sold in 1896, being just a small margin over the cost of production and hauling to the railroad. In January, 1896, at a time when negotiations were on foot for the sale of a large tract of blue rock land on Swan Creek, Mr. S. Q. Weatherly, former county judge, and prior to that county surveyor of Lewis County, while on a trip to Mt. Pleasant, noticed the peculiar brown rock in the ditch at the roadside on the W. S. Jennings’ farm west of Mt. Pleasant, and being interested in minerals, picked up a piece of it. Noticing the analagous appearance to the weathered blue rock, which is generally brown on the surface, he dropped it in his buggy. On his return to Swan Creek, he showed it to Mr. Harry Arnold and Col. D. B. Cooper, who were interested in the negotiations above mentioned. These gentlemen had it analyzed and finding it to be 75 per cent phosphate rock, induced Mr. Weatherly to say nothing about it until after their deal was consummated. Associated with these gentlemen was also Mr. W. J. Webster, and during the time from January to July, 1896, when the negotiations for the sale of the blue rock properties were finally closed, they ascertained partially the extent of the Mt. Pleasant brown rock field. When their “big trade” was made they formed the firm of H. I. Arnold & Co., bought two and one-half acres of land from Mr. Mumford Smith, ostensibly for a calf lot for Mt. Pleasant’s present genial mayor, Mr. W. D. Cooper, leased at a royalty of ten cents per ton a few acres from Mr. Cooper and a few from a darky named Tom Smith, got an option from Mrs. M. G. Frierson on the present Columbian & Blue Grass Hills, and commenced mining rock and putting it on the cars at a cost of about eighty-five cents per ton. This rock, without preparation, ran 75 per cent instead of 65 per cent, but whereas the blue rock had never run higher than 3 per cent I. & A., this rock ran, in the state they shipped it, from 4½ to 6 per cent I. & A.