240 DR. THOMAS STERRY HUNT ON THE 
Maclure also described another area of the same rocks found on the north branch of the 
Catawba, at the base of the Linville Mountains in McDowell county, North Carolina. 
§ 60. Emmons, who had examined this belt near the Schuylkill river, in Pennsylvania, 
was also acquainted with its extension into North Carolina, and in his report on the geology 
of that state, in 1856, mentions it as one of the five areas of Taconic rocks found within its 
borders, which are described in that report. Prof. Kerr, who has since studied still farther 
the distribution of these rocks in that state, has delineated them on the geological map 
accompanying his report of 1875. These rocks present, according to him, “ five principal 
outcrops, with two or three subordinate ones,” which may be regarded as portions of these. 
Referring to his report for details, it may be said that the first, or easternmost belt of these 
rocks in North Carolina, is in part concealed under the tertiary strata east of Raleigh, but is 
again seen west of the Raleigh granite-range. The second, a band with a breadth of from 
twenty to forty miles, extends from north to south across the state, along the western border 
of the mesozoic area. 
§ 61. The third, designated as the King’s-Mountain belt, and including besides the 
mountain of that name, the elevations known as Crowder’s, Spencer’s, and Anderson’s 
Mountains, is in the southern part of the state, west of the Catawba River; stretching 
through Catawba, Lincoln, and Gaston counties, and passing thence into South Carolina. 
This third belt is in the strike of that traced by Maclure from the Delaware into Stokes and 
Surry counties in the northern part of the state, and is regarded by Kerr as a continuation 
of it, though interrupted for some distance between the Yadkin and the Catawba. 
§ 62. The fourth is a great belt which, like the second, is continuous across the state, 
along the Blue Ridge ; the rocks in question passing from the east to the west side of that 
chain in the southwest part of their extension. This belt, at the Swannanoa Gap, is from 
six to seven miles broad, but has its greatest development in the Linville Mountains, 
where it includes the area of these rocks noticed by Maclure on the north branch of the 
Catawba, in McDowell county, and also an important section described by Emmons, on 
the French-Broad River in Buncombe county, to be noticed farther on. 
§ 63. The fifth, or western area of the Taconic rocks is confined, according to Kerr, to 
the southwestern part of the state, into which it extends from Tennessee, including the 
mass of the Smoky Mountain of the Unaka range; and stretches from Madison county, 
widening southward, until it includes almost the whole breadth of Cherokee county, in the 
southwest corner of the state. Tothe Taconic of this region belongs the well-known section 
near Murphy in that county. The rocks of this belt, as seen at Paint Rock on the French- 
Broad River, in Madison county, beginning at the Tennessee line, are by Kerr, and by Saf- 
ford, identified as a continuous part of the Ocoee, Chilhowee and Knox groups of the latter.* 
It is under these names that Safford has described the Lower Taconic series of the Appala- 
chian valley, as found in eastern Tennesee ; of which the belt in the southwest counties of 
North Carolina forms a part. The Ocoee slates, and the Chilhowee or Scolithus-sandstone 
of eastern Tennessee, both recognized by Emmons as Lower Taconic, represent the Lower 
Primal slates and quartzites, which, in this region, have a greatly augmented volume. 
In Alabama, according to Prof. Eugene A. Smith, the thickness of this sandstone is not less 
than 2,000 feet, and that of the underlying slates, 10,000 feet. 

* Kerr, Report Geol. Survey of N. Carolina, 1875, vol. I. p. 131. Fs 
+ Kerr. loc. cit. pp. 188, 139. 

