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river, in Orangeburgh county, by means of a fine series of fossils, 

 collected by my friend Dr William Blanding, who also found in 

 the vicinity a Belemnite imbedded in limestone, indicating the 

 presence of the Cretaceous rock, which constitutes the prevail- 

 ing, and indeed, almost the only formation between Vance's Fer- 

 ry and Charleston. At the former place then, we find the Eocene 

 superimposed upon the Cretaceous strata, and capped by a super- 

 ficial deposit of Older Pliocene sands. The latter have been dis- 

 covered also near the junction of the Congaree and Wateree ri- 

 vers, a distance of seventy- five miles, in a direct line, to Bull's 

 Bay, the nearest point on the coast. 



From Vance's Ferry, the line of the JKocene runs a little to the 

 south of west and passing through the town of Orangeburgh, cros- 

 ses the Savannah river at Shell Bluff which is its boundary on the 

 west. This formation appears at intervals, in a distance of 

 forty miles, following the course of the river.* Shell Bluff, ac- 

 cording to the observatious of Mr Vanuxem, is " seventy feet 

 high, formed of various beds' of impure carbonate of lime". The 

 Ostrea Qeorgiana is here "in a bed nearly six feet in thickness 

 in the upper part". A deposit of the same kind of oyster shells 

 occurs near Millegeville in Georgia, accompanied by the Scutel- 

 la qninquefaria, (Say) imbedded in a white, friable limestone. 

 Three parallel ridges of these oyster shells are said to run from 

 the Savannah to the Altamaha river, f and to be extensively quar- 

 ried by the Indigo planters, who convert them into lime. 



The Eocene is extensively developed in Early county in the 

 form of sandstone with silicified fossils corresponding with a rock 

 in the vicinity of Claiborne, Alabama, the dark surface of which 

 is paved, as it were, with beautifully translucent silicified shells. 

 Dr. N. Jones, of Mobile, remarks, that at Fort Gaines, on the 

 Chattahochie,. a bluff occurs more than one hundred and fifty feet 

 in elevation, the close resemblance of which to the Claiborne es- 

 carpment is very striking ; it is certainly of the same age as the 

 latter. 



At Claiborne, I have had the best opportunity of investigating 

 the organic remains and superposition of the Eocene strata, for 

 which I am indebted to the hospitality and assistance of my kind 

 friend CHARLES TAIT, ESQ. whose enthusiastic love of the science 

 would alone endear him to every student of geology. The es- 

 carpment, or bluff, facing the Alabama river at Claiborne, is, at 

 the point where I measured it, about one hundred and sixty feet 



*Vide Appendix to Cuvier's "Theory ofc the Earth " by Dr. Mitchell. 



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