346 On the Low Country of North Carolina. 



have stood till the clay was deposited. A single deposition 

 will seldom be sufficient to account for the appearances. 

 When the bed is thick, and especially if it separate readily 

 into thin laminae, or if it be made up of alternate laminae of 

 clay and sand, it will follow, that the same cause has operated 

 there a nnmber of times — that waters holding particles of 

 fine clay suspended, have been repeatedly brought to the 

 spot and detained there, till the earthy matters they contain- 

 ed have subsided. 



All these appearances are exhibited by our low country. 

 It is true, as has been already observed, that individual strata 

 are of moderate extent and very variable thickness and com- 

 position, yet their appearance is such as to force conviction 

 upon the mind, that they have been deposited from water at 

 rest, and that considerable time was occupied in their forma- 

 tion. They are horizontal or nearly so. The beds of clay 

 are sometimes free from admixtures of sand, but composed of 

 a great number of layers, many of them not thicker than a 

 wafer, that have evidently been' added in succession, and 

 sometimes there are alternate layers of clay and sand, from 

 a twelfth to a quarter of an inch in thickness. 



4. The strata of the low country were formed in the bed of 

 the sea, and this district became dry land either by a depres- 

 sion of the level of the ocean, or by the elevation of its bed, by 

 a force operating from beneath. 



In support of this proposition, I can offer only the single 

 argument, upon which all our conclusions in the science of 

 geology must necessarily rest, that, it will account for all the 

 appearances — the perfect preservation of the most delicate 

 ridges, furrows, and processes of the shells — the uniformity of 

 their characters, and the aspect of the beds of clay and sand. 

 The particular by which the geologists of the present day 

 are most remarkably distinguished from their predecessors of 

 the last age, is the extreme caution with which they make 

 their deductions. We are compelled by the evidence that 

 surrounds us on every side, to admit the occurrence of ancient 

 revolutions in the condition of the globe, of the particular 

 causes of which we shall probably remain forever in dark- 

 ness. The effects and attendant circumstances are so remote 

 from any thing we are in the habit of witnessing, that we are 

 at a loss to conceive of any cause adequate to their produc- 

 tion. All that we can do in these cases is to classify the facts. 

 But the nearer we approach to our own age, with the greater 



