WARD.) THE NORTH CAROLINA AREA. 267 
changed into lignite, and partly of perfectly silicified trunks of trees, exceeding two 
feet in diameter. The soil in which the majority of these trees grew is still con- 
cealed. Segments of their trunks stand out of the soft rock, inclining.at an angle to 
the horizon, but lean ina direction contrary to the dip of the rock. A road cuts 
through the strata in which the forest grew. All that remains of it are the trunks; 
it was impossible to find a leaf or stem of herbage or fruit. The softer and more 
perishable parts and organs are destroyed by unknown agencies. Perhaps some for- 
tunate blow of the hammer may bring to light the leaves and fruit. The structure 
of these trunks prove them to belong to the natural family of Conifer, or the family 
to which the pines, spruces, and hemlocks belong. 
The trees extend for half a mile or more, and no one, on seeing the number, can 
doubt that here grew a forest when the rocks were forming. Similar trunks have 
been found at Madison, and pieces of trunks occur upon Deep River, near Evans’s 
bridge, and another forest of the same character upon Drowning Creek, in Richmond 
County. They occupy the same position in the series. 
We next find a casual mention by Professor Rogers in the Proceed- 
ings of the Boston Society of Natural History for January 4, 1854,1 
that he had found in the summer of 1850 in the coal rocks of Deep 
River, North Carolina, several of the same plants which he was describ- 
ing from Virginia. Among the plants mentioned as having been seen 
there by him were Lguisetwm columnare, a Zamites, and a plumose 
plant referred to Lycopodites, strongly resembling Z. Well¢amsonis of 
the Yorkshire coast. 
At the Albany meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science in 1856, Dr. Ebenezer Emmons read a paper entitled: 
Permian and Triassic Systems of North Carolina. This paper was 
published only by title in the Proceedings of the Association, but a 
brief abstract of it occurs in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Jour- 
nal for 1857, in which, in addition to animal remains, he mentions the 
occurrence in the North Carolina deposits, regarded by him as Keuper, 
of a variety of plants, among which he enumerates some belonging to 
the Cycadacee, a Voltzia, and also a supposed Walchia. 
The same year (1856) appeared Dr. Emmons’s Geological Report of 
the Midland Counties of North Carolina, which contains the first impor- 
tant mention of the fossil plants of the North Carolina basin. In this 
report Dr. Emmons, besides giving the most exhaustive geological 
account of the North Carolina deposits that had thus far been made, 
paid special attention to both the vegetable and animal remains. The 
former he supposed to occur in two somewhat distinct formations, viz, 
the so-called Permian and the Trias. His Permian deposits holding 
vegetable remains occur along the Deep River at Haywood in Chatham 
County, near Wadesboro in Anson, and also some 15 miles south- 
west of Troy in Montgomery. He mentions the remains of petrified 
and silicified wood, and seems to regard these as the ‘‘ most important 
vegetable remains” that are found at all the above-mentioned localities; 
also at Jones Falls, and in the. Miocene of Wayne County, where they 
1Vol. V, p. 15. 2Vol. V, p. 370. 
