OUTLINES. 
149 
Wilmington, there is a stratum of 2 to 4 feet which is tilled with marine 
shells. And at Snow Hill, in Lenoir county, on Contentnea Creek, is a 
line of bluffs on the south side of the stream, several hundred yards in 
length, and 20 to 40 feet high, the lower portion of which, to the height 
of 10 or 12 feet is a cretaceous sandy marly te, filled with shells, many of 
them of new species and representing several new genera, but, containing 
known species enough to enable Prof. Conrad, to whom by good fortune 
the unique collection in the museum from this locality was submitted, to 
determine the horizon as that of the Pipley group. For a description of 
these Snow' Hill species and a synopsis of the Cretaceous shells of the 
State, the reader is referred to Prof. Conrad’s paper in the Appendix. 
It is probable therefore that all the cretaceous beds of North Carolina, 
so far as visible, should be referred to the upper cretaceous. These beds 
occupy everywhere the lowest position, and nowhere expose a thickness 
above 50 or GO feet, so that there is nothing on which to ground even a 
conjecture of their vertical extent. 
Very few species of the higher orders of animals have been found in 
these beds. In addition to the list of Prof. Conrad, Dr. Emmons gives 
Pelemintella americana, B. Compressa, and one or two large Saurians ; 
and there is a large femur of a chelonian in the State collection. 
TERTIARY. 
The two lower subdivisions of this formation, Eocene and Miocene, 
are extensively exposed, chiefly along the w T atercourses and in the ravines 
and bluffs, and in the wells and plantation ditches of the eastern counties. 
Eocene . — 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. The 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 w T est ; and it 
occurs in limited outcrops throughout the triangular region between 
Newbern and Goldsboro’ and Wilmington. It consists of a light-colored 
and yellowish consolidated marlyte, as in the steep bluffs on the Neuse 
10 miles below Goldsboro, and again, 15 to 20 feet thick, 10 miles above 
Newbern, and in the Natural Wells near Magnolia, containing, in this 
form, 40 to 80 per cent, of carbonate of lime ; or of a shell conglomerate 
as seen about Newbern, and 8 or 10 miles up the Trent river, — a rock much 
used for building in Newbern, and burned for lime, while in some limi- 
ted localities it is made up of silieious casts of shells from which all the 
