ae 
242 DR. THOMAS STERRY HUNT ON THE 
a westward inclination, here rest unconformably upon the eastward-dipping crystalline 
rocks of the Blue Ridge. They present at the base a conglomerate with a talcose paste, 
followed by a succession of slates, with interposed masses of granular and vitreons quart- 
zites and conglomerates ; having an aggregate thickness of about 2400 feet. To these 
succeed 500 feet of limestone, followed by more than 150 feet of fine-grained slates ; 
besides a farther mass of coarser schistose rocks, imperfectly exposed. Emmons notes in 
this section the larger development of quartzite and of conglomerates, which is shown in 
the greater thickness of the strata below the limestone ; but declares, for the rest, that the 
rocks of the section, even in their details, are lithogically indistinguishable from tle 
Taconic series in Williamstown, Massachusetts.* 
§ 67. In connection with the unconformable superposition of the Taconic series to the 
older crystalline rocks, Emmons has noted, both in North Carolina and in New York, the 
appearance in some places among the Taconic strata, of granitic and primary rocks; and 
concludes that they are portions of the irregular underlying floor, exposed by the folding 
and denudation of the Taconic. Of certain interposed bands, he says, “the geologist 
might regard them as interlaminated masses, but a careful examination of the relations of 
these rocks to each other will result in the conyiction that the primary rocks are under- 
lying and older masses, and have no connection with the sedimentary rocks which they 
geographically separate.” 
5 In a later book, his Manual of Geology, published in 1861, Emmons reproduces the 
figures of the sections noticed above, but gives with them only very brief descriptions. 
He there states that the maximum thickness of the Lower Taconic rocks may be about 
5000 feet. Above the basal conglomerate, which is sometimes absent, there are generally, 
according to his later statement, three masses of quartzite, divided by slates ; the upper of 
these being often vitreous, and the lower granular in texture. The roofing-slates are said 
to occur in the upper part of the mass of slates which overlies the limestone. 
§ 68. Passing southward from North Carolina, the Lower Taconic rocks were by 
Tuomey traced across South Carolina, and into Georgia and Alabama. He described them 
as a series of quartzites, with talcose slates and marbles, well displayed in the Spartanburg 
district, in the northern part of South Carolina. They are also met with in Pickens, the 
most western district of the state, in what is probably a continuation of the fourth belt of 
North Carolina; and extend across Pickens into the contiguous portions of Georgia. The 
belt just mentioned has there a considerable development in Habersham county, where it 
has been seen by the writer, and also in the adjacent counties of Halland Union; a region … 
in which a considerable number of diamonds, supposed to occur in this series, has been — 
found. There appears also to be another and more eastern belt, which according to C. U. 
Shepard, passes from South Carolina into the counties of Lincoln and Columbia in Georgia; ig 
in the former of which occurs Graves Mountain, known to mineralogists as a locality of. 
pyrophyllite and kyanite, as well as for remarkable crystals of rutile and of lazulite, all 
of which are found with the granular quartzites of the series. t 
§ 69. These rocks were the subject of extended and careful studies by the late Oscar — 
Lieber, whose examinations were chiefly confined to the area in the northern part of South 

* American Geology, IT., p. 24. 
7 American Geology IL. p. 26. 
{ Amer. Jour. Science, 1859, xxyii., p. 36. 

