[115] 
THE TERTIARY GEOLOGY OF THE EASTERN AND SOUTHERN UNITED STATES. 
By Professor Angelo Heilprin. 
The United States Border Tertiaries and their European Equivalents. 
The marine Tertiary deposits of the eastern United States occupy the outermost 
border (barring the post-Tertiary formations) of the Atlantic slope in a continuous 
extent from the neighborhood of Long Branch, N. J., to near, or quite to, the 
extremity of the peninsula of Florida. Beds referable to the same geological period 
have been identified on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and good grounds exist for the 
supposition that similar beds extend beneath the water surface between this island 
and the New Jersey coast, and further to the northward. On the Gulf border the 
Tertiary deposits extend continuously through the States of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, 
Mississippi and Louisiana to a point on the Rio Grande in Texas at least (if not 
considerably more than) 60 miles N. W. of Laredo. Tennessee, Kentucky, Blinois 
and Missouri likewise contribute to the Tertiary area, while about one-half of the 
State of Arkansas is occupied by deposits of this age. On the Atlantic border the 
inner boundary line is removed from the coast by from about 25 miles, at a point 
opposite Trenton, to 160 miles in Georgia (near Macon). The deposits on the Gulf 
slope occupying the Mississippi embay ment extend northward from the Gulf fully 
seven degrees, or about 500 miles, or nearly half way to the Canadian boundary line 
in Wisconsin. 
The beds composing these deposits are in the north largely in the form of loose 
sands, clays, and marls, but in the south solid rock— shelly limestones, “buhrstone ” 
enters largely into their composition, more particularly of the older series. Ihe 
dip on the Atlantic border, as also in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, is uniformly 
towards the S. E. ; more nearly S. in Georgia, and S. by W. over a considerable 
portion of Alabama and Mississippi. Regarding the same in Florida little has been 
accurately determined. No disturbances of any moment appear to have, intervene 
between the period of the deposition of the oldest member and the present day. In 
New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, and again in Alabama, INIississippi, Tennessee, 
Arkansas and Texas, the depo,sits abut wholly or in part against those of the Greta- 
ceou, period (Sennonian and M=eslrichtian)-lying in son.e mstances conformably 
upon them-while in some of the other States these last are completely (or nearly so) 
°'”Asto'’fhe'Iges indicated by the different members constituting the entire marine 
