GEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
f>6 
Observations were made or attempted at a number of other points, but 
without success, as the weather was unfavorable. An imperfect series of 
observations was gotten, for example, at Murphy, aud at the confluence 
of the South Fork of the Catawba, two of the most important of the 
points selected, but they are too defective to give results worthy of con- 
fidence. 
It is evidently a matter of some consecptence that the State of North 
Carolina should know more of her whereabouts on the planet, and how 
much there is of her ; and it is proposed to extend the series of determi- 
nations. as it shall be convenient, so as to fix at least the boundaries and 
some of the more prominent physiographical features, and thus bring the 
State map into something like reasonable correspondence with facts. As 
it is, not only the boundaries, as was seen, are much misplaced, but our 
geographers, who plainly would not “ respect even the Equator,” if we 
had one among us, have mislocated the Blue Ridge, in some cases even 
many miles. So that it is impossible without confusion and serious error, 
to use the existing maps as the basis of a geological map of any detail. 
CLIMATICAL. 
The climate of North Carolina has a range corresponding to the 
variety of its topographical features, upon which, to an important 
extent, its various special or regional climates are dependent. The 
average climate of the whole State, of which that of the middle division 
is a fair representative, places it in the warm temperate zone, or on the 
southern margin of the temperate zone, the limits of that zone being 
taken at the isothermals of 40° and 60°. But on account of the peculiar 
geographical and topographical relations, its eastern margin being thrust 
outward a hundred miles beyond the position which the normal trend of 
the coast would give it, and almost into the edge of the great gulf stream, 
and its western end not only extending inland nearly five hundred miles, 
but being lifted into high table lands and lofty ridges and peaks, many of 
them more than a mile and a quarter in vertical height, the isotherms in- 
stead of keeping the parallels of latitude, are turned southward with a 
rapid curvature as they approach the western section, until at length 
they cross them almost at right angles. 
So that while the mean temperature of one extremity is both elevated 
and regulated, (or approximated toan insular character in its distribution), 
that of the other is correspondingly depressed and carried up even to the 
colder half of the temperate zone, giving us the climate of the Gulf States 
(Alabama and Texas), on the one hand, and of New England on the other 
