ELISHA MlTCHEIvL SCIENTII'IC SOCIETY. 54 



of North Carolina, in which connection it is known as 

 the Carolina Slate Belt. It includes, in North Carolina, 

 portions of the counties of Granville, Person, Durham, 

 Orang-e, Alamance, Chatham, Randolph, Davidson, Row- 

 an, Moore, Mont<>-oniery, Stanly, Cabarrus, Anson, and 

 Union. On the west it is bounded by an area of igneous 

 crystalline rocks, and on the east, for the g-reater part, 

 by the Jura-Trias sandstones, conglomerates and shales. 



The general term slates and schists, used above, covers 

 a broad designation. The country rocks of the region 

 are: — 1) Argillaceous, sericitic (hydro-micaceous), and 

 chloritic slates and schists, all of them more or less meta- 

 morphosed. 2) Sedimentary pre-Jura-Trias slates. 3) 

 Ancient volcanic rhyolites, quartz-porphyries, etc., and 

 pyroclastic breccias, of ten sheared into a schistose struct- 

 ure. The general strike of the schistosity is N. 20° to 

 50° E., and the dip is steeply to the northwest. 



In 1856, Prof. Ebenezer Emmons, in his Geolog-ical Re- 

 port of the Midland Counties of North Carolina (pp. 

 38-73) described this region and referred the rocks to the 

 Taconic s^^stem; and in 1875, Prof. W. C. Kerr, in his 

 Report of the Geological Survey of North Carolina 

 (vol. 1; pp. 131-139) included the same rocks in the 

 Huronian. 



In order to gain a more comprehensive oversight of this 

 important geological area, it will be well to first state 

 briefly both Emmons' and Kerr's conceptions of their 

 Taconic and Huronian in this part of North Carolina; and 

 then to discuss the same in the light of more recent inves- 

 tigations, carried on by the writer during the latter part of 

 1894, for the North Carolina Geological Survey. These 

 investigations were unfortunately of a cursory and incom- 

 plete nature, and can but form the beginning of a more 

 thorough study of the region later on. However, they will 

 well serve the present purpose of showing the errors 

 into which Emmons and Kerr had fallen, and the miscon- 



