250 Geology of North Carolina. 



showed them to contain sulphur, carbonic acid, and several 

 salts of lime. 



In the county of Rockingham, Prof. O. found a wedge 

 shaped patch of what he calls a transition formation, coming 

 in from Virginia among the primary rocks. We should 

 judge it to be a coal formation, as it contains sandstone, 

 shale, and coal. It is remarkable also for lignites. 



But a more singular substance, which had been mistaken by 

 the inhabitants for coal, is found at Col. Winston's, two miles 

 east of Germanton. It consists of the remains of trees, some- 

 times lying scattered loosely over the ground in small billets, 

 and sometimes presenting to view entire trunks, obeying the 

 general direction and inclination of the rocky strata, affording 

 another example of a subterranean forest similar to that found on 

 the River Neuse, and before described under the name of Lignite, 

 (see page 98.) These fragments and trunks of fossil wood ap- 

 pear in the road for a distance of a mile and a half east of Ger- 

 manton, reaching to the foot of the hill on which that town is 

 built, that is, to the very extremity of the transition formation 

 itself. The fragments that are scattered over the surface are 

 frequently so much altered by exposure, that they resemble 

 common petrified wood ; but those specimens which are taken 

 fresh from their bed, are invested with bark perfectly reduced 

 to coal, and of a shining black color. The ligneous structure is 

 less apparent in the mass. In a blacksmith's forge they burn 

 with a yellowish flame, slightly tinged with green, emitting the 

 odour of gunpowder, and finally melt into a yellowish black glass. 



The best view of the lignite is in the bed of a small river, 

 near a saw-mill, where entire and very perfect trunks of trees 

 are seen between the open layers of a coarse fragmented rock 

 very much resembling granite. These trunks lie parallel with 

 each other, and appear between the rocks formed, as though by 

 compression, into flattened cylinders or ellipsoids, the diameters 

 of the elliptical bases or ends being respectively twenty four and 

 nine inches. The ends of large trunks exhibiting the same 

 oval shape frequently project out of the banks. Here the for- 

 mation terminates on the south, resting against a hill of mica 

 slate, the strata of which and the transition rocks, dip in oppo- 

 site directions, resting against each other and forming a roof. 



We wish now to ask the intelligent legislator, who may 

 cast his eye over this analysis, whether such a developement 

 of internal resources as this Report exhibits, does not amply 



