58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



current by a shorter line to the shores of what is now the 

 Carolinas, not then elevated above the sea-level, but shallow 

 and but slightly covered, over a vast extent, constantly and 

 gradually rising from natural causes, and the accumulation of 

 sands driven in from greater depths of the ocean. Such a 

 shelving shore offered every facility for the growth of coral 

 animals, which in their myriad forms, flourished in the genial 

 waters. They maintain that the outward or seaward growth 

 of these animals was limited by the increasing depth, beyond 

 which they cannot live, so that their structures grew upwards 

 towards the surface, forming walls or reefs, inclosing behind 

 them a vast shoal, lagoon or inland sea, in which swarmed 

 thousands of species of marine animals. Into this inland sea, 

 the weaker species would naturally resort for safety, and the 

 stronger for prey, while over the reefs, which were, of course, 

 ages in forming, the remains of innumerable monsters of the 

 deep would be hurled by the waves and by every great con- 

 vulsion of the ocean. Such a place would be the natural 

 resort of land animals of many kinds, and birds of prey, 

 through many thousand years. It became the great burial- 

 place for the monsters of the sea and the land. 



This theory, though it appeals somewhat boldly to the 

 imagination, may not be so very extravagant, after all, when 

 we consider the great periods of time through which these 

 vast accumulations must have been formed. It is said that, 

 some years ago, a company of scientific men visited Turner's 

 Falls, Massachusetts, to examine the geological features of 

 that remarkable locality, when some one asked the learned 

 leader of the party, the late Dr. Hitchcock, how old he sup- 

 posed a certain specimen of track-bearing shale, full of the 

 unmistakable tracks or foot-prints of birds, might be. He 

 replied that he could not tell exactly, but it was so old that a 

 hundred thousand years either way could be of no sort of 

 account. And it is said that Prof. Agassiz, after studying 

 carefully the process of building or accumulating the reefs on 

 the coast of Florida, gave it as his opinion that the peninsula 

 of Florida must have been at least a hundred and thirty-five* 

 thousand years in forming up to its present elevation, even now 

 scarcely raised above the level of the surrounding ocean ; 

 while another scientific man, of very high authority, estimates 



