ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 65 



Br. Kerr evidently adopts the views of Dr. Emmons in full, and, 

 believing them to be only the stray specimens of the true coprolites 

 or fossil excrements which may be found in any of the later forma- 

 tions, attached no importance to them. Such coprolites, sprinkled 

 through a number of formations, seldom occur in suiflciint quantity 

 to be of interest industrially. These writers do not appear to have 

 known of the existence of phosphates bedded in layers similar to 

 the South Carolina phosphates, and distinguished from the true 

 coprolites as pseudo-coprolites (the phosphatized marls of Holmes). 



Distribution. — Since my investigations started, phosphate rock 

 has been found so far (January, 1884,) in larger or smaller quanti- 

 ties, in Sampson, Duplin, Onslow, Pender, New Hanover, Bladen, 

 Columbus and Brunswick counties. The same rock probably ex- 

 tends into the southern portion of Wayne county, and possibly into 

 liCnoir and Jones. 



The Phosphatie Conglomerates of Pender and New Hanover. — 

 The phosphatic rock is found in two distinctly different relations. 

 In the lower country, as in Pender and New Hanover, we find 

 rounded, phosphatic nodules imbedded in a shell marl, which 

 all of the writers on North Carolina geology have classed as 

 Eocene. At Castle Hayne, for example, this bed occurs from 

 one to four feet below the surface and four to five feet thick. It 

 looks just as if the water-worn phosphatic nodules, sharks^ teeth and 

 quartz pebbles had been deposited here upon the bottom of the 

 sea, and that the broken and ground-up shells which were depos- 

 ited on top of them had then filled all the interstices and cemented 

 them together- At places, where the smallest nodules are deposited, 

 the shell-powder did not reach the bottom of the layer, and we find 

 loose nodules at the bottom. At other places the shell-powder did 

 not suffice to cover the layer, and we have a lot of loose nodules on 

 top. At another place the lime deposit rises far above the layer of 

 nodules, and we find a limestone, nearly pure carbonate, on top. 

 The lime formation evidently had a different niveau from the nodule 

 bed, as we find it at many places without a trace of the nodules. 

 The bedding of the nodules and the lime did not go on exactly to- 

 gether, therefore. We do not find nodules disseminated here and there 

 through the carbonate of lime, as the coprolites are found in the 

 marl beds, but we find the nodules touching in the layer and the 

 powdered-shell only filling the interstices. 



These nodules are of all conceivable sizes, from the size of a 

 pumkin to a grain of wheat, though mostly about the size one's fist, 

 and rounded or kidney shape. They are all considerably water, 



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