AMERICAN GEOLOGY— DECADE OF 1840-1849. 409 



caifying With it the debris torn from the surface over which it passed 

 Until it met the Tertiary sea, upon the shores of which its burden was 

 deposited.' 1 This theory, he felt, would sufficiently account for that 

 enormously long - ridge of drift extending parallel with the Atlantic 

 coast, for the moment the current entered the Tertiary sea its velocity 

 would be checked and the greater part of the transported detritus 

 deposited. The reader will here recognize an old idea, but slightly 

 modified. 



Commenting on the fact that these beds contain no fossils, he wrote: 



The only way by which I can account for this * * * is by supposing that, 

 before the drift period, the bottom of this sea had been elevated and converted into 

 dry land, and that at the commencement of the drift period a depression of the land 

 took place; that the time between the influx of the sea and the deposition of the drift 

 was too short for marine animals even to have commenced a colonization, and that the 

 land was again elevated into its present position and subjected to long-continued 

 denudation, which produced its present configuration ; that after this elevation the 

 rivers excavated their present channels. 



Tuome} T was assisted in this work by Oscar M. Lieber, geologist, 

 and J. W. Mallet, chemist. 



The withdrawal of Tuomey from the held in South Carolina inci- 

 dental to his removal to Alabama left the position of State geologist 

 vacant until the appointment of Lieber, in 1855. In the meantime 

 F. S. Holmes, working privatelv, gave in the American 



F. S. Holmes on the '. , te l . „• 



Geology of Charleston Journal of Science for 1849 a brief paper on the p - eol- 



and Vicinity, 1849. ... ™ , . , 



ogy of the vicinity or Charleston, which ma}*- be noted 

 here, with the preliminary remark that this was Doctor Holmes's first 

 venture in the geological field. In this paper attention was called to 

 the fact that the city of Charleston was built upon geological forma- 

 tions supposed to be identical in age and in other respects similar to 

 those upon which London and Paris are located, i. e., upon the Eocene. 

 The adjacent sea islands he thought to have been formed through the 

 action of the ground swell of the ocean and the streams flowing down 

 from the interior during the time when the land was gradually emerg- 

 ing from the sea. 



He agreed with Tuomey in taking exception to the then g-enerally 

 received opinion that the sea was advancing upon these shores, having 

 been led b} r his own observations to the conclusion "that if the ocean 

 does wash off portions of the shore at one exposed point it deposits the 

 same at no great distance upon another.' 1 The supposed indications 

 of subsidence, such as the stumps and roots of trees now below the 

 level of high tide, he accounted for on the supposition that outer sand 

 barriers, which had prevented the ingress of salt waters, were gradu- 

 ally removed, allowing the waves to wash away the fine silt and mud 

 between the roots of the trees, thus permitting them to sink into it 

 and become embedded. This, it will be noted, was essentially the view 

 advanced by Tuomey. 



