BALDWIN COUNTY. 135 



longevity are the following : Mrs. Huson, a lady now nearly 

 80, and presides at the table of one of the best hotels in Geor- 

 gia, with great dignity. Mrs. Tompkins and Mrs. Robinson, 

 both living, over 80. Mr. Abner Hammond died at an ad- 

 vanced age. Mr. John Dismukes was 93 years old at his 

 death. 



Minerals. — Granite, felspar, &c. In the vicinity of Mil- 

 ledgeville the geologist may find much to interest him. Sir Charles 

 Lyell, President of the London Geological Society, visited Geor- 

 gia in 1846, and in a volume containing a history of his travels, 

 recently published, thus speaks of the country around Milledge- 

 ville : 



" It is striking, around Milledgeville, to see so many large 

 detached and rounded boulders of granite lying on the surface 

 of the soil, and all strictly confined within the limits of the 

 granitic region. One of these, on the slope of a hill, three 

 miles from the town, resting on gneiss, measured twelve feet 

 in its longest diameter, and was four feet high. I presume that 

 these boulders are nearly in situ ; they may have constituted 

 " tors" of granite, like those in Cornwall, fragments of masses, 

 once more extensive, left by denudation at a period when the 

 country was rising out of the sea, and fragments may have 

 been occasionally thrown down by the waves, and swept to 

 a small distance from their original sites. 



" Another most singular phenomenon in the environs of Mil- 

 ledgeville is the depth to which the gneiss and mica schist 

 have decomposed in situ. Some very instructive sections of 

 the disintegrated rocks have been laid open in the precipices 

 of recently formed ravines. Were it not that the original 

 intersecting veins of white quartz remain unaltered, to show 

 that the layers of sand, clay, and loam are mere laminae of gneiss 

 and mica schist, resolved into their elements, a geologist would 

 suppose that they were ordinary alternations of sandy and 

 clayey beds with occasional cross stratification, the whole 

 just in the state in which they were first deposited. Now 

 and then, as if to confirm the deception, a large crystal of 

 felspar, eight or ten inches long, is seen to retain its angles, 

 although converted into kaolin. Similar crystals, almost as 

 perfect, may be seen washed into the tertiary strata south of 

 the granitic region, where white porcelain clays, quartzose gra- 



