510 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN. ASSOCIATION 
since the large quantities of them in the lower St. Lawrence attracted 
attention, and successful trials were made for their reduction in the 
bloomary fires of Northern New York, after which an establishment for 
working them was erected at Moisie in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where, 
under the direction of skilled workmen from Lake Champlain, the treat- 
ment of these iron sands has been successfully carried on. These sand 
ores are remarkably free from both sulphur and phosphorus, and hence 
yield an iron of great purity and toughness. e working is effected in 
forges like those used on Lake Champlain, and prs no difficulties. 
Prof. W. C. Kerr remarked ** On some points in the Stratigraphy a 
Surface Geology of North Carolina." ispum wo ibn narrow belts piedi 
of coal-bearing triassic rocks in North Carolina, lying, nearly parallel, in 
a direction a little north of east, A: separated by an elevated and rolling 
tract of metamorphie and granite rocks sem to seventy-five miles wide, 
are found to constitute the fragmentary fringes of an eroded inticindi 
the one dipping north-west at an angle of 30? to 75?, the other south-east 
ism plateau or mountain chain lying eastward, between the mesozoic 
e petens which **has left no sign" of its existence but this. I 
jum found no trace of glacial action in North Carolina, even in the most 
elevated mountain plateaus, but abundance of Quaternary gravels, whose 
position is such as to negative the existence of glaciers in iM latitude, 
y ad cut 
position is very Viet at an elevation of more than one thousand feet 
above the sea, and near the top of a hill one hundred feet above the val- 
ley of the Catawba Sce (which is one mile distant), and twenty-five 
miles from the Blue Ridge. It is covered and protected by eight to ten . 
feet of fluvial gravel and sand. It is peculiar also in its contents, being 
made up in considerable part of drift wood, and containing abundance of 
pine and hemlock cones (there being no hemlock forests nearer than the 
Blue Ridge) and other seeds, and also of charcoal, partially burned pine 
knots and charred logs. 
Another peculiarity is that the peat, occupying the middle of the nearly 
vertical face of the cut d Arce vas deep), and being exposed but 
one season, has put forth an abun > swamp vegetation, €— of 
carex, juncus, and several etna ws Swamp grass and wee 
There are evidences in eastern North Carolina of A oscilla- 
tions of sea level during the prehuman period (probably synchronous 
with the Da epoch). The accumulations of stratified gravels on 
the summits and slopes of the hills, at an elevation of more than three 
hundred feet above the present sea level, extending entirely across the 
State, at a distance of one hundred and on to one hundred and 
fty miles xtent 
direction, while the minimum of elevation is bug by the excavation 
of the channel of the Cape Fear River (e. g.) for more than thirty miles 
to a depth exceeding one hundred feet below the present tide level. 
* 
