OF THE SOUTHERN ATLANTIC STATES. 103 



abundant are some large OstresB, of what species I know not, the 

 specimens being lost. On this account, too, I cannot speak so 

 decidedly as I wished to have done of the quality of the lime- 

 stone, which ought certainly to be of some practical importance, 

 being on a river navigable by steamboats, and in a region where 

 lime bears a high price and wood is very cheap. A little enter- 

 prise and sldll only are requisite to create an extensive business 

 here in the manufacture of lime. But though its good effects as 

 a manure force itself upon the notice of those who use the adja- 

 cent fields, still no attempts have been made to extend its use 

 further than nature has seen fit to spread the rock, and the calca- 

 reous deposits formed from it. 



So on the Edisto, in Colleton district, this rock is equally 

 available, and equally neglected ; and though lime enough might 

 be made on these two streams to supply the whole of the eastern 

 parts of South Carolina and Georgia, at an expense not exceeding 

 fifteen cents a bushel, yet the inhabitants prefer to import thek 

 lime from Thomaston, Maine, and pay at Charleston two dollars 

 per cask, or when brought up to the neighborhood of these vast 

 quarries it sells for three dollars per cask ! In Chester county, 

 Penn., while on the geological survey of that State, I have seen 

 lime made and sold for ten cents a bushel, where the natural 

 facilities are no gi-eater than here. And when on the same 

 business in Maine, and employed at Thomaston in obtaining the 

 statistics of the lime business, I came to the conclusion that the 

 southern States must be remarkably deficient in limestone ; that 

 notwithstanding the difficulties the Thomaston people had to 

 contend with, in the high price of fuel, a bad harbor, that frozen 

 up one third of the year, and their remoteness, still they managed 

 to monopolize the lime business of the Atlantic coast, of the Gulf 

 of Mexico, and up the Mississippi to Natchez. The average cost 

 of a cask of lime at the wharves at Thomaston, was, as near as 

 we could estimate it, about seventy cents, and this included twenty 

 cents for the cask. But unfortunately the term " cask " represents 

 no definite measure. By law it should hold " forty gallons," five 

 bushels, but every mason of whom I have made inquiries, and who 

 has measured them, says their capacity is continually changing ; 



