22 
TH E SOLTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
THE MARL FORMATION. 
As Geology is intimately concerned in point- 
ing out to Agriculture the kinds of rock uselul 
as manures, we have thought it advisable to re- 
publish in our paper an extract from a report 
read before the Geological Society of London, 
by the eminent Geologist, Mr. Lyell. tl e visit- 
ed our State in 1841, and on his return to Eu- 
rope, read before the Society, a paper, “On the 
Tertiary Formations and their connection with 
the chalk in Virginia, and other parts of the 
United States.” We have selected from this 
paper what relates to South Carolina and Geor- 
gia. We would recommend to our Farmers 
engaged in marling, to preserve all bones and 
shells for scientific examination, as they are in- 
teresting to those gentlemen who are making 
collections for their cabinets. — Carolina Plan- 
ter. 
“ ON THE TERTIARY FORMATION OF SOUTH 
CAROLINA AND GEORGIA.” 
BY CHARLES LYELL, V.-PT. G. S. L. 
Charleston stands on a yellow sand, beneath 
which is a blue clay, containing the remains of 
Testacea that inhabit the adjacent seas; and 
Dr. Ravenel informed Mr. Lyell that he had 
found in it the Gnathodon cyrenoides, nor now 
known to occur in a living state nearer than the 
Gull of Mexico. The author could not ascertain 
whether the post-pliocene formation rises above 
high-water mark ; but he states that, on the 
Cooper river, thirty miles north of Charleston, 
there occurs beneath the superficial sand and 
mottled clay a fresh water formation, in which 
Dr. Ravenel has found the remains of the Cy- 
press, Hickory and Cedar, which must have 
grown in a fresh water swamp, although the 
formation is now six feet below the level of 
high water. No shells have been noticed in the 
deposit, but they are also commonly wanting in 
the marsh accumulations of that region. As 
the salt water of Cooper river must now cover 
much of this deposit, a very modern subsidence, 
Mr. Lyell says, must have taken place along 
the coast. At Dr. Ravenel’s plantation in the 
low country, near the mouth of Cooper river, is 
a pulverulent limestone, artificially exposed, 
which Mr. Lyell thinks may bean eocene form- 
ation, though its fossils differ from those of other 
deposits of that epoch. 
Between this point and Vance’s Ferry, on the 
Santee river, is a continuous formation of white 
limestone, which Mr. Lyell examined with Dr. 
Ravenel at Strawberry Ferry, Mulberry Land- 
ing, the banks of the Santee canal, Wantout 
and Eutaw. It varies in hardness, and consists 
of comminuted shells; but it very rarely exhi- 
bits any laminae of deposition, and even where 
it attains a thickness of twenty or thirty feet, 
there would be a difficulty in determining whe- 
ther it w'ere horizontal, if a bed of oysters, like 
that at Vance’s Ferry, did not occasionally oc- 
cur. At the Rock bridge near Eutgw springs, 
the limestone composed of comminuted shells, 
corals, the spines of Echini, &c., resembles so 
precisely the upper cretaceous formations at 
Timber Creek in New Jersey, that Mr. Lyell at 
first felt no doubt of the Idepiity of the two form- 
ations, although the organic contents of the 
limestone prove that it belongs to the tertiary se- 
ries. This resemblance has led to the admis- 
sion into Dr. Morton’s excellent work on the 
fossils of the cretaceous group, of the Balanus 
peregrinus, Pectencalvatns, P. membranosns, Te- 
rehrodula lachryma, Conusgyratus^ Scutella Ly- 
eeli, and Echinus infulatus*, though they do not 
really belong to the chalk series; and to seve- 
ral other similar mistakes, whereby, Mr. Lyell 
observes, beds of passage have been erroneously 
supposed to exist. Among the most widely 
distributed of the limestone fossils is the Ostrea 
seUceforniis s and he searched in vain at various 
points throughout a distance of forty miles for 
an admixture of characteristic cretaceous and 
tertiary organic remains, though the chalkform- 
ation, containing Belemnites and Exogyrse, oc- 
curs between Vance’s Ferry and Camden. The 
^ See pi. 10 of Morton’s Synopsis. 
Santee limestone, he is of opinion, cannot be 
less than 120 feet thick at-Strawberry Ferry, be- 
ing vertically exposed to the extent of seventy 
feet in the banks and bottom of Cooper river, 
and to the height of fifty feet in the neighboring 
hills. Its upper surface is very irregular, and 
is usually covered with sand in which no shells 
have been found. Mr. Lyell followed the lime- 
stone north-westwardly for twelve miles by 
Cave Hall and Struble’s Mill to near Half-way 
Swamp. At Stoudenmire or Stout Creek, a 
tributary of the Santee, it has disappeared be- 
neath a newer tertiary deposit of considerable 
thickness, consisting of slaty clays and quarlzose 
sand. No fossils were observed by him in the 
deposit at Aiken. A similar formation is de- 
veloped at Augusta, where the Savannah divides 
the States of South Carolina and Georgia, and 
it must, in some places, be more than 200 feet 
thick. Three miles above the town are the ra- 
pids, which descend over highly inclined clay- 
slate and chlorite chist, overlaid unconformably 
by tertiary beds. This point is the western 
boundary of the supracretaceous series; and 
Mr. Lyell observes, that on all the great rivers 
of the Atlantic border from Maryland to Geor- 
gia, and still further south, the first falls or ra- 
pids are along a line at which the granitic and 
hypogene rocks meet the tertiary, and which is 
nearly parallel to the Atlantic coast, but at the 
distance oflOO or 150 geographical miles. This 
great feature, Mr. Lyell states, was first pointed 
out by Maclure, but he adds that portionsof the 
tertiary formation usually cover the hypogene 
rocks for a certain distance above the Falls, 
and that their outline is very irregular and sinu- 
ous. On Race’s Creek near Augusta, the high- 
ly inclined clay-slate, containing chloritic 
quartzose beds with subordinate strata much 
charged with iron, are decomposed to the depth 
of many yards into clays and sands which re- 
senible so precisely a large portion of the hori- 
zontal tertiary strata of the neighboring coun- 
try, that disintegrated materials might be mis- 
taken for them, if the veins of quartz which of- 
ten traverse the argillaceous beds at a conside- 
rable angle, did not continue unaltered. The 
only point at which Mr. Lyell saw any organic 
remains in beds associated with these upper ter- 
tiary red strata was at Richmond in Virginia, 
where he obtained casts of decidedly miocene 
fossils; but as he observed on the Savannah 
river thick beds of sandy red earth beneath the 
burr-stone of Stony Blufl', he concludes that the 
same mineral character may sometimes belong 
to the upper division of the eocene group. At 
the rocks six miles west of Augusta, the tertiary 
beds derived from the hypogene rocks have the 
appearance of granite, and have been called 
gneiss by some geologists. They exhibit occa 
sionally a distinct cross-stratiheation, and in- 
clude angular masses of pure kaolin. 
Though the Savannah in its course from Au- 
gusta to the sea, flows lor the greater part in a 
wide alluvial plain, and has a fall of less than 
one foot in a mile, yet Mr. Lyell descended it 
to obtain information, by means of the Bluffs, 
respecting the superposition of the several mas- 
ses, natural sections being otherwise difficult to 
obta in. After passing cliffs of horizonta 1 strata 
in which the brick-red sand and loam prevail, 
the first exposure of a new deposit was observed 
at Bhell Bluff, foi ty miles helow Augusta. 1 he 
height of the section was 120 feet, and its extent 
more than half a mile. The lowest exposed 
strata consisted of white, highly calcareous sand, 
derived chiefly from comminuted shells, but the 
beds passed upwards into a solid limestone, 
sometimes concretionary, and containing nu- 
merous casts of shells. In one place a layer of 
pale green clay showed the horizontal character 
of the formation. The upper part of this depo- 
sit is more sandy and clayey, and incloses a bed 
of huge oysters, Osirea Georgiana, occupying 
evidently the position in which they lived. The 
total thickness of these lower strata is eighty 
feet. The upper portion of the cliff is composed 
of forty feet of the red loam which prevails at 
Aiken and Augusta, and yellow sand. Mr. 
Lyell did not find any fossils in this deposit, but 
he believes that it belongs to the burr-stone 
formation, and therefore to be an upper eocene 
accumulation. At his first inspection of the 
casts contained in the limestone, he inferred that 
they belonged to eocene species, without any in- 
termixture of cretaceous or miocene terms; but 
it was not till he had the advantage of Mr. Con- 
rad’s assistance that he was able to determine 
the following twelve species which are well 
known to be characteristic fossils of the eocene 
beds of Claiborne and Alabama : — 
Oliva Alabamiensis. 
Calyptraea trochiformis. 
Dentalium alternans. 
Venericardia planicosta 
Cytherea Poulsoni. 
perovata. 
Corbula nasuta. 
oniscus. 
Nuculamagnifica. 
Crassatella praetexta. 
Ostrea sellseformis. 
Alabamiensis 
The same shelly, white, ealcareous beds, 
overlaid by red clay and loam, are exhibited at 
London Bluff, nine miles below Shell Bluff, and 
a horizontal bed of the large ojistersis exposed 
in a cliff two miles farther down the river. At 
Stony Bluff, on the borders of Scriven county, 
the calcareous deposit is no longer visible, the 
clifl being composed of silicious beds of the 
burr-stone and mill-stone series, resting upon 
brick-red and vermilion-colored loam. This 
section, Mr. Lyell states, is of great importance, 
as it concurs in proving that the mill-stone of 
this region, with its eocene fossils, is an integral 
part of the great red loam and sand formation 
usually devoid of organic remains. The burr- 
rock of Stony Bluff" abounds with cavities and 
geodes partially filled with crystals of quartz 
and agates. In the fragments scattered over the 
adjacent fields, Mr. Lyell observed casts of uni- 
valves. At Millhave'n, eight miles from Stony 
BluflT and five from the Savannah river, these si- 
licious beds again crop out and afford casts of the 
genera Pecten, Eulima or Bonellia, and a Ci- 
daris. It had been pierced through to the depth 
of twenty-six feet, and was associated with red 
loam, white sand and kaolin, affording further 
evidence of these deposits belonging to one 
formation. 
One mile west of Jacksonborough, in the ford 
of Bria.'' and Beaver Dam Creeks, is a lime- 
stone passing upwards into w'hite marl which 
appears to have been deeply denudated, and is 
overlaid by sand that belongs to a formation of 
sand, loam, and ferruginous sand rock, referred 
by Mr. L) ell to the red loam and burr-stone se- 
ries. The limestone and marl, although rarely 
exposed in sections, are considered to constitute 
very generally the fundamental strata of the re- 
gion on account of the not unfrequent occurrence 
of lime-sinks or circular depressions, formed in 
the beds of loam and sand by subterranean drain- 
age. The fossils procured from the limestone 
of Jacksonborough by Mr. Lyell, as well as 
those presented to him by Col. Jones, of Mill- 
haven, were for the greater part well-defined 
casts, and were specifically new to American 
paleontologists; nevertheless he has no hesita- 
tion, from their general aspect, to regard them 
as belonging to the eocene period. The genera 
enumerated in the paper are. Conus, Uliva, 
Bulla, Voluta, Bucciniim, Fnsus, Cerithium, 
Trochus, Calypt.aea, Dentalium, Crassatella, 
Chama, Cardium, Cytherea, Liihodomus, Lu- 
cina, pecten, and Ostrea. The Troehus is con- 
sidered identical with the T. oglutinans which 
occurs in the Paris b?sin ; and the Lithodomus 
to be undistinguishable from the L. dactylus of 
the West Indies, one of the lew eocene Parisian 
fossils identified by Deshayes. 
All the Bluffs examined by Mr. Lyell on the 
Savannah river below Briar Creek belong to the 
beds above the limestone, and are referable 
chiefly, if not entirely, to the burr-stone forma- 
tion. ’ In white clays exposed a fe w hundred 
yards below Tiger Leap in Hudson’s Reach, the 
author found impressions of Mactra, Pecten and 
Cardita, also fragments of fishes’ tee'h, particu- 
larly of the genus Myliobates, likewise several 
teeth of the genus Lamna, and one belonging to 
a Noiidamus or a nearly allied genus. At Sis- 
ter’s Ferry he observed not only the brick-red 
loam, with the red and gray clay and sand, buf 
