TACONIC QUESTION IN GEOLOGY. 248 
Carolina, where, according to him, they are best seen at and near King’s Mountain, in 
York district, and occupy a region about twenty-one miles long, and from four to seven 
miles wide in York, Spartanburg and Union districts. This region is the southward 
prolongation and terminus of the third or King’s-Mountain belt of North Carolina, which 
we have described as passing southward from Gaston county; and, as in the opinion of 
Kerr, the continuation of the belt which, from the Yadkin River, is traced northeastward 
to the Chester and Lancaster valleys of Pennsylvania, and thence into the great Appalach- 
ian valley. 
§ 70. The rock most characteristic of this series is, according to Lieber, the granular 
more or less schistose quartzite, which, with its associated iron-ores and slates, he com- 
pared to the similar rock described by Eschwege, from the province of Minas Geraes in 
Brazil, as a chloritic or schistose quartz-rock. This, from its occurrence at Mount Itaco- 
lumi, near Villa Rica, was by Eschwege called itacolumite, a name which was also adopted 
by Humboldt and Claussen for these and related rocks, as a whole; but is now commonly 
given only to the flexible and elastic variety of the quartzite, the elastic sandstone of 
Martius. This variety, however, is exceptional alike ia Brazil and in our Lower Taconic 
series, and the designation of itacolumite was by Lieber applied not only to the whole of 
the quartzite, but to its interstratified schists and limestones, which he described as the 
Itacolumitic group or series. 
§ 71. These rocks, on lithological grounds, were conjectured by Lieber to be the strati- 
graphical equivalents of the Itacolumite or diamond-bearing series of Brazil, and of the 
similar rocks described by Jacquemont, and later by Claussen, as occurring in the diamond- 
region of India; the Lower Vindhyan series of the present geological survey of that coun- 
try. He also noticed its probable relation to the rocks found by Helmersen and Hofmann 
in Russia, in the southern Urals; which they had described as identical with the itacolum- 
ite series of Brazil, and which haye since been found to be diamantiferous. I have else- 
where discussed at some length the history of these rocks, to which it is proposed to return 
in a later chapter.* 
Lieber’s studies are to be found in his four annual reports on the geology of South 
Carolina, published in 1856-1860. In the third report, there appears, as a supplement to 
the first three, an essay on the Itacolumitic series, resuming his conclusions and obser- 
vations up to that date.f This same essay was also published in German in 1860. 
§ 72. The studies by Lieber are the more interesting and instructive as they are the 
work of a student trained in a foreign school, and were made without any reference to the 
preceding investigations of Maclure, Eaton, Emmons or Rogers; and apparently without 
the knowledge that these rocks extended to the north of the Carolinas. As his reports are 

* Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1882; Review of the Progress of Geology. 
+ The Itacolumite and its associates, comprising observations on their geological importance and their con- 
nection with the occurrence of gold; a Contribution to the Geologic Chronology of the Southern Alleghanies ; 
supplementary to reports I., IL, and IIL.; by 0. M. Lieber, state geologist, Columbia, 8. C., 1859. This, though 
having a separate title, is paged consecutively (pages 77-149) with report III., published in 1858, with which it 
forms one yolume. The relations of gold to the Itacolumite, and to other rocks, are considered in a subsequent 
part of the same volume, pp. 153-220. 
i The German edition of Lieber’s essay appears in the Gangstudien of Von Cotta and Herrm, Muller; dritter 
Band, drittes und viertes Heft. pp. 309-507. Freiberg, 1860. 
