PREFACE. 



The final report of Professor Tuomey on the geological survey of South-Carolina was 

 published in the year 1848; the Legislature had authorized its publication in 1846, so 

 that it was nearly two years passing through the press. This delay was, at the time, sup- 

 posed by some to arise from the neglect of the Surveyor in furnishing the fossils, which 

 were to have been copied and engraved, as illustrations of the text ; but this was not the 

 cause ; the fossils required for twenty plates had actually been prepared and arranged for 

 the draughtsman, and several of the plates had been drawn and printed ; but the artist 

 engaged by the publisher to do the press work, ruined the first two plates, after obtaining 

 from them about two hundred impressions only. 



The committee in charge of the work then allowed the printing to proceed without the 

 plates ; and in exculpation of himself, the author appended the following postscript to the 

 preface of the report : 



" While the report was passing through the press, A. S. Johnson, Esq., the publisher, 

 informed me that the committee on publication had decided that the plates containing 

 figures of the fossils of the State, which were to have accompanied it were not essential, 

 and they are, therefore, omitted." 



At the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in 

 Charleston, in May, 1850, the disappointment of geologists, occasioned by this omission, 

 was the common topic of conversation ; and at the urgent solicitation of a number of the 

 members, among whom were Professors Agassiz and Bache, Dr. Gould and others, who 

 had examined our collections, we concluded to attempt their publication, at our own risk 

 and cost. 



We have published the work, and it is now before you. its artistic merits, we believe, 

 will challenge the severest criticism ; but as a scientific work, descriptive of the forms of 

 the Pleiocene formation of South-Carolina, we only claim for it entire truthfulness in what 

 we have described. The congratulatory letters received from such savans as Agassiz, d'Or- 

 bigney, Leidy, Dana and others, and the unsolicited expressions of approval by the public 

 press, both at home and abroad, amply compensates us for our part of the labor. 



