278 Tertiary. 



this for the same climate except so far as the proportion of the h^nd 

 and water surface may have acted to change it. It, too, is highly fos- 

 siliferous in some of its exposures, and the shells, generally, belong to 

 living genera and many of the species still survive in the waters bor- 

 dering the adjacent coast. 



The marine Pliocene strata are found in Maryland, superimposed 

 upon the Miocene, and in South Carolina upon the Eocene, and, gener- 

 ally, forming a narrow border at the east of these outcrops on the At- 

 lantic coast and a wider border on the south adjoining the Gulf coast. 

 Fossil shells of species now living on the adjacent coast abound inter- 

 mingled with those which have become extinct. Tlie number of living- 

 species indicates, so far as one may be capable of judging, identically 

 the same climate on the eastern coast of the United States that now pre- 

 vails, substantially the same ma}^ be said of the Pliocene of the Pacific 

 coast, and especially of the California strata of this age and the living 

 and extinct species. Indeed, there is no palseontological evidence that 

 the Pliocene climate was different from the present, on this continent, 

 nor could we reasonably suppose it to have been different, because the 

 outlines of the continent were nearly the same as they are now. 

 The Pliocene so graduates into the Post-pliocene at many places that 

 the separation of the two is very difficult, and in others it is wholly 

 impracticable, and, in such cases, an arbitrary approximating line for 

 separation is assumed. 



The marine Post-pliocene of the eastern coast, south of the State of 

 New York, and bordering the Atlantic and the Gulf, and also on the 

 Pacific coast, is usually found conformable with the Pliocene below, 

 and alwa3's graduating into the present or modern times without a 

 break stratigraphically or palaeontologicall3^ In South Carolina it 

 forms a belt along the coast 8 or 9 miles wide, and the fossils nearly 

 all belong to living species now inhabiting the coast. There are, in 

 layers of blue mud, and also in the sands which succeed them of this 

 age, the bones of horses, hogs, dogs, I'abbits, beavers, tapirs, and other 

 mammals that flourished, as far as we can judge, throughout the 

 period. Here rests the evidence that the climate of South Carolina, 

 during the Post- pliocene, was substantially the same that it is at 

 present, audit seems to be conclusive, in the absence of any geologi- 

 cal evidence to the contrary. The stratigraphical indications of the 

 Post-pliocene of Texas and California, and the palteontological evi- 

 dences, without a single exception, are that there has been no change 

 in the climate of these States since the Pliocene ase. That man was 



