8 



Though a limited discussion of the Pleistocene of the whole At- 

 lantic Coast from Maine to Florida will be given, and a discussion 

 of the succession, relation and extent of the Coastal Plain formations 

 in South Carolina will be attempted, the main object of this paper 

 is to attempt an investigation of what must have been the environ- 

 mental conditions under which the marine mollusca lived during the 

 Pleistocene Period in the neighborhood of South Carolina. Tem- 

 perature, depth, shore, bottom, current and other conditions that then 

 existed will be sought for by comparison with such conditions today, 

 upon the basis that a species now favoring a particular habitat, if 

 then in existence, favored the same kind of habitat. Since 95 per 

 cent, of Pleistocene species are regarded as recent, as commonly 

 accepted, one easily sees that if exact knowledge were at hand con- 

 cerning the habitats of living species a fairly just interpretation of 

 Pleistocene conditions could be arrived at. In connection with this 

 problem tables have been made of all South Carolina Pleistocene 

 mollusca so far as the writer could gather the information, the work 

 of Holmes and Dall being drawn upon to make the tables as full 

 as possible. So far as the writer is aware this is the first attempt 

 made at just this problem for the Pleistocene, and he feels that his 

 effort is very imperfect, but trusts that the labor may be of some 

 service, however slight. 



The material collected during the summer was sorted and classified 

 during the fall and winter at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Ball's 

 work in the Proceedings of the Wagner Free Institute of Sciences 

 was followed in naming the different species found. There are 

 some species, however, which are not given by Dall ; these have been 

 named as Holmes named them in his "Post Pliocene Fossils of South 

 Carolina." Just here it must be stated that during the year 1903-04 

 a class in Paleontology at Vanderbilt University, of which the writer 

 was a member, worked up a lot of shells from the Stono River beds. 

 This Stono River material has been used in making out the tables. 

 In addition, material from Cornfield Harbor, St. Mary's County, 

 Maryland, has been ready at hand and used for purposes of com- 

 parison. A list of the Cornfield Harbor fossils, increased by a few 

 additional forms from Conrad's list from that same locality, will be 

 given. So also will be given lists of Pleistocene fossils from the 

 Florida beds, and from the beds of Sankoty Head, Massachusetts, 

 and attention called to the similarities or differences of these fauna 

 from the different localities. 



Inasmuch as no one formation can be treated independently of 



