Southern Horticuliural Trip. 133 



of the material now excavated is said to contain from fifty to sixty per 

 cent of true phosphate of lime. 



These phosphates lie in beds at an average of about a foot and a half 

 below the surface, though some extend to four or six feet in depth. This 

 stratum is from twelve to eighteen inches thick, and the nodules are from 

 a few inches to a foot in length. Among these are frequently found shells 

 and the bones of sharks and other fishes. Of the former we brought home 

 a large joint of the backbone, and also a tooth which measures six inches 

 broad by six long. 



By the politeness of Professors Shepard, senior and junior, we visited 

 the Wando Mills, engaged in the manufacture of this phosphate. The 

 nodules are crushed, and ground to powder; and of this, twelve hundred 

 pounds, with four hundred of dried meat, and the same quantity of 

 sulphuric acid, are placed in a revolving basin ; and, when thoroughly 

 mixed, it is dropped down to the next story, and put up in bags for market. 

 The demand at this mill, we were told, was ahead of the production. Price 

 sixty dollars per ton. 



At Charleston we called at the garden of Mr. Jennings, formerly the 

 Lucas Place, which the writer had visited fifteen years ago. Here we 

 saw the same old camellia-tree, of the single red species, twenty feet high, 

 twenty-five feet spread, and fifteen inches thick in the stem, and which 

 in a single season, it was said, has produced eight or ten thousand flow- 

 ers. Besides this, we saw many other large camellia-trees, such as Lady 

 Hume, double white, and imbricata, in bloom, and a Lagerstmmia In- 

 dica, or Crape myrtle, whose trunk was more than a foot and a half in 

 diameter and twenty feet high, having been cut down from probably about 

 thirty feet. Passing along the street, we noticed a Magnolia grandiflora 

 fifty feet high, thirty-five feet spread, with stem eighteen inches thick ; and 

 near the battery the Spanish bayonet-plant ( Yucca glorhsa), whose stem was 

 ten inches in diameter, and some of its arms more than twenty feet long. 



As we approach Charleston from the north, the Finns longiflora (long- 

 leaved pine) first makes its appearance in the forest ; the young trees of 

 which, with their bright green leaves, nearly a foot in length, are so beauti- 

 ful, that they have been cultivated in greenhouses at the North in pots. 



Savannah, Jan. 19. — It was our good fortune when we arrived here to 

 meet our old and excellent friend Hon. William Schley, who took us in 



