ELISHA MITCKKLL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 97 



abandonment are none of them more than thirty years 

 old, as shown by their ring-s of annual g-rowth. 



I could find in the King-'s Mountain reg'ion no means 

 of determining- the approximate ag'e of these deposits, 

 but when I extend my observations across the State 

 to the Dan River and Pilot Mountain regions, I found 

 there the same pebbles of quartz and qviartzite resting 

 unconformably upon the brown sandstones of the New- 

 ark s3'stem, while above the pebble-beds, and con- 

 formable with them, were the same mottled clays that 

 I had found in the King's mountain region. This 

 established their date as certainly post-Triassic, and I 

 should have been inclined to call them Cretaceous, had 

 not an examination of the border of the Cretaceous in 

 Harnett, Cumberland and Moore counties, convinced 

 me b}^ the coarseness of the materials there that there 

 was the western border of the Cretaceous, and that 

 the beds of that age could not have extended as far 

 westward as the region under consideration. It led me 

 to the belief, however, that the base-levelling of the 

 piedmont reg'ion must have been accomplished while 

 the shore-line lay near the present western border of 

 the Cretaceous rocks, or in Cretaceous time. And, 

 while I am as vet unable to determine the exact ao-e of 

 these deposits, I have at least found out that the pecu- 

 liar shaping of these topographic outliers was the 

 work of waves, and that it was accomplished in post- 

 Cretaceous time. 



