And the “ Great Carolina Marl Bed.” 31 
It was in this Post-Pleiocene age, the period when 
the American Elephant, or Mammoth, the Mastodon, 
Rhinoceros, Megathereum, Hadrosaurus, and other 
gigantic quadrupeds roamed the Carolina forests, and 
repaired periodically to these Salt-lakes or Lagoons, 
» 
or as they are called in Kentucky, “ Salt-licks ;” and 
during a series of indefinite ages, engaged as they 
were first sipping brine, then licking salt, and deposit- 
ing their fecal remains, and ultimately their bones and 
teeth, in fact their dead bodies, in these great open 
“ crawls” or pens, thus preparing, as ordained before- 
hand by the Great Master-Builder of our Earth, a 
storehouse of rich material for Man’s use. They 
converted the rocks, prepared of old at the bot- 
tom of the Ocean, into the basis of a most wonderful 
fertilizing substance, a substance which was to become 
by the labor and sweat of Man's brow, a renovator of 
his worn-out soils, causing it to yield in overflowing 
measures bread and meat, for the use of the sons and 
daughters of men; and not for their use only, but to 
give food in great abundance to the animals who are 
Man's companions in the present age ; to the Ant, the 
Bee, and the Butterfly, animated links in the Chain of 
Creation, by which the whole fabric itself is sustained. 
God never intended that it should d¢ thus used be- 
fore the appointed time, ordained of old by Him who 
formed and fashioned these rocks. 
