737 
could not ascertain whether this post-pliocene formation rises above 
high-water mark ; but he states that, on the Cooper river thirty miles 
north of Charleston, there occurs beneath the superficial sand and 
mottled clay a freshwater formation, in which Dr. Ravenel has found 
the remains of the Cypress, Hiccory and Cedar, which must have 
grown in a freshwater swamp, although the formation is now six 
feet below the level of high water. No shells have been noticed in 
the deposit, but they are also commonly wanting in the marsh accu- 
mulations of that region. As the salt water of Cooper river must 
now cover much of this deposit, a very modern subsidence, Mr. Lyell 
says, must have taken place along the coast. At Dr. Ravenel’s 
plantation in the low country near the mouth of Cooper river is a 
pulverulent limestone, artificially exposed, which Mr. Lyell thinks 
may be an eocene formation, though its fossils differ from those of 
other deposit of that epoch. 
Between this point and Vance’s Ferry, on the Santee river, is a 
continuous formation of white limestone, which Mr. Lyell examined 
with Dr. Ravenel at Strawberry Ferry, Mulberry Landing, the banks 
of the Santee canal, Wantout and Eutaw. It varies in hardness, and 
consists of comminuted shells ; ; but it very rarely exhibits any lamine 
of deposition, and even where it attains a thickness of twenty or thirty 
feet there would be a difficulty in determining whether it were hori- 
zontal, if a bed of oysters, like that at Vance’s Ferry, did not occa- 
sionally occur. At the Rock bridge near Eutaw springs, the lime- 
stone composed of comminuted shells, corals, the spines of Echini, 
&c., resemble so precisely the upper cretaceous formation at Timber 
Creek in New Jersey, that Mr. Lyell at first felt no doubt of the 
identity of the two formations, although the organic contents of the 
limestone prove that it belongs to the tertiary series. This resem- 
blance has led to the admission into Dr. Morton’s excellent work on 
the fossils of the cretaceous group, of the Balanus peregrinus, Pecten 
calvatus, P. membranosus, Terebratula lachryma, Conus gyratus, 
Scutella Lyetli, and Echinus infulatus*, though they do not really 
belong to the chalk series ; and to several other similar mistakes 
whereby, Mr. Lyell observes, beds of passage have been erroneously 
supposed to exist. Among the most widely distributed of the lime- 
stone fossils is the Ostrea selleformis; and he searched in vain at 
various points throughout a distance of forty miles for an admixture 
of characteristic cretaceous and tertiary organic remains, though the 
chalk formation, containing Belemnites and Exogyre, occurs between 
Vance’s Ferry and Camden. The Santee limestone, he is of opinion, 
cannot be less than 120 feet thick at Strawberry Ferry, being verti- 
cally exposed to the extent of seventy feet in the banks and bottom 
of Cooper river, and to the height of fifty feet in the neighbouring 
hills. Its upper surface is very irregular, and is usually covered with 
sand in which no shells have been found. Mr. Lyell followed 
the limestone north-westwardly for twelve miles by Cave Hall and 
Struble’s Mill to near Half-way Swamp. At Stoudenmire or Stout 
Creek, a tributary of the Santee, it has disappeared beneath a newer 
* See pl. 10. of Morton’s Synopsis. 
