132 
THE TERTIARY GEOLOGrY OP THE 
The following descriptions are borrowed from Kerr’s report on the geology of the 
State * : — 
j^ocKNK.— The distribution of the rocks of this subdivision is more limited than 
that of the Cretaceous, and much more so than that of the Miocene, which overlies 
it. 'I'he boundaries of it, north and south, are the Neuse and the Cape Fear; and 
it is found on the Neuse to within 2 or 3 miles of the railroad crossing, near 
Goldsboro’, and at one point, in an isolated outcrop on the river bluff 7 or 8 miles 
further west; and it occurs in limited outcrops throughout the triangular region 
between Newbern and Goldsboro’ and Wilmington. It consists of light-colored and 
yellowish consolidated marlites (bluffs of the Neuse 10 miles below Goldsboro’, above 
Newbern, Natural Wells near Magnolia), shell conglomerates (about Newbern, Trent 
River), siliceous buhrstones, calcareous sandstone (near Goldsboro’, Wilmington, etc.), 
gray and hard limestone, coarse conglomerates of worn shells, sharks’ teeth, and 
fragments of bones and stony pebbles (upper part of MTlmington and at Rocky Point), 
or fine shaly, light-colored infusorial clays, as seen in Sampson County. Outside of 
the region bounded by the above points there are two or three patches of Eocene, one 
capping a hill 350 feet above the sea, on the railroad 7 miles east of Raleigh, a siliceous 
shell conglomerate of 2 or 3 acres in e.xtent and 6 to 10 inches thick; the second, a 
ferruginous and calcareous sandstone of 4 or 5 feet thickness, on the top of a hill in 
the southeastern corner of Moore; this last containing some shells and many 
cchinoderms. These fragments, or outliers, show that this formation, limited as it 
was in thickness, had a vastly greater horizontal extent than would have been 
suspected, and they carrj' the shores of the Eocene seas quite into the hill country of 
the State, and nearly 150 miles from the present coast line, and to an elevation of 
nearly 400 feet. 
sul.div.sion of the Tertiary extends over nearly the whole seaboard 
region, from the sea-shore and the western margin of the sounds, 50 to 75 miles inland, 
t .as a nmeh peater horizontal extent than the preceding, and a greater thickness, 
...t IS less contmnous, being found in disconnected patches, often of quite limited area, 
”"‘y ravines, ditclies, ivdU, etc. It 
iTe " - 3 to 6 or 8 feet, and occasionally io or 20. 
beiiiK much tliick"' •°'™r<l the northern border of the Stute, the bedt 
fact iK-hiK of I rivers south of them, and in 
crrcZ:: -r: r;r.: -- - - 
