i8 



remains of many vertebrata found, especially on Ashley River, about 

 forty species. Professor Agassiz, who visited the region with Holmes, 

 described it as "the greatest cemetery he ever saw." In a paper 

 before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 March, 1850, Holmes described at some length this very interesting 

 locality. In depressions in the Eocene marls, says he, which are 

 exposed for several miles along the Ashley up stream from a 

 point about a mile below old Ashley Ferry, mingled with detritus 

 and molluscan fossils, were found the remains of many vertebrate 

 animals. They were also found in the bed of loose gravelly sand 

 and among the fragments of Eocene marl which are largely robbed 

 of their lime and have their interstices filled in with blue mud and in 

 places with peat, the whole being somewhat in a bed just above and 

 partly mixed in with the sand. At just what age these beds con- 

 taining the vertebrate remains were deposited, he did not attempt to 

 say further than that they had been deposited since the Eocene, and 

 that the Miocene and Pliocene were generally thought to be absent 

 from this region, and that then the beds must be post-Pliocene or Re- 

 cent. In his post-Pliocene text he unhestitatingly pronounces these 

 beds to be post-Pliocene, and enters descriptions and cuts of the ver- 

 tebrate fossils found in them. In this part of the work Professor 

 Joseph Leidy, of Philadelphia, rendered valuable service. He was 

 greatly interested in the Ashley River vertebrate remains, visited 

 Holmes and made collections for himself. He differed with Holmes 

 in some particulars, regarding some of the forms which Holmes re- 

 garded post-Pliocene as recent. He wrote descriptions of the fossil 

 vertebrata, and these make up a considerable part of the volume. 

 Holmes did not attempt to trace the non-fossiliferous Pleistocene 

 back from the coast, but neither did Ruffin nor Tourney. In fact, 

 Tourney says that owing to the blending of the strata it is almost 

 impossible to distinguish the arenaceous beds of the different Ter- 

 tiary formations. "The sandy beds of the Buhrstone are inter- 

 mingled with those of the Pliocene, which pass into the superin- 

 cumbent beds of the post-Pliocene, and the latter are in turn blended 

 with the moving sands of the coast." 



From 1856 on through a few years, Mr. O. M. Lieber, State 

 geologist, made his annual reports on the survey of South Carolina. 

 For the most part these reports treat of the Piedmont portion of the 

 State and are largely of an economic nature. He does, however, in 

 the report for 1856 touch upon Pleistocene formations. He, too, 

 had his tilt at the great question of the subsidence of the coast, and 



