and ornamental purposes. A turnpike road was found at one spot completely covered and blackened (paved, as it were,) for some distance with fragment and blocks of this material, in consequence of its crossing a large outcrop very obliquely. In one place was found the outcrop of a large vein of ilmenite. Veins of pyrites were found crossing the beds of streams, where the current appeared to have washed them bare, and one such vein was observed which had a well marked schistose structure, similar and conformable to that of the imbedding talcose rocks, forming a true pyrites schist. In other places solid banks of limonite were found, standing in place above the surface of the ground, indicating veins (or strata ?) of pyrites below. Specimens were seen of a crystalline hematite schist, said to form a large vein (or stratum?) in Crowder's mountain, but this was not visited.

It was also perfectly evident, at most of the iron ore beds before mentioned, that the ore was merely the gozzan, or product of oxydation of large strata of sulphids, probably pyrrhotine, existing below. In some of these places, as at the Ormond, Ferguson and Briggs' Ore Banks, the mining operations have penetrated, in places, to the unaltered, or only partially altered, pyrites. At the Alison and Costner Ore Banks, which are excavations into strata of ore from thirty to forty feet in width, the material last thrown out is a true magnetite schist, mixed however with much limonite.

Throughout the whole range, wherever examined, the talcose schists were found to contain, in numerous places, small seams, incrustations and stains of a black substance, which gave blowpipe reactions for cobalt. At every one of the mines above mentioned the ore, or refuse material thrown out, was found to be more or less coated with this substance. At the Ormond Ore Bank, particularly, so much of this substance was found mixed with the ore that it is probably connected with the reputation of the iron produced from this ore, for hardness and toughness, throughout the surrounding country. At the Asbury Shaft of the Long Creek Mines also, masses of quartz thrown out from the vein were found thickly incrusted with mammillary masses of this wad, or earthy cobalt. It cannot be doubted that it is the gozzan of some cobaltiferous sulphid existing unaltered in the rocks below. If this substance has ever attracted the attention of mineralogical explorers in this section, it has probably been mistaken for earthy manganese, from which it may readily be distinguished, however, by being very soft, smearing the fingers, and when cut with a knife exhibiting on the section a bright black lustre like that of compact graphite; and to these properties it owes the designation of "black lead," which it bears among the people of the country (to whom it is familiar).

At a spot about a mile in a northeasterly direction from the Long Creek Mines I found, crossing at right angles the road from Lincolnton to Yorkville in S. C., where the latter crosses over an elevation called "Cross"" or the "Paysour mountain," the outcrop of a large "vein," or stratum of the rock, which contains very much of this black gozzan or wad. It can scarcely escape the attention of a person travelling along the road, as it appears like a broad black band at the side of the latter. At this spot it measures about fifteen feet in width. A small opening was made into it three or four rods from the road on the southern side, and it was found to be about twelve feet wide, included between walls of talcose slate, but so highly decomposed that no satisfactory evidence could be obtained of its character where unchanged. It was traced and opened again about half a mile southwesterly from the road, and found to consist there of a number of parallel strata, separated by seams of talcose schist one or two feet wide. The largest of these strata was ten feet wide, presenting a solid bank of limonite, mixed with a little quartz, so compact that it was with difficulty broken by a pick. Following the Yorkville road southerly from the point where. this vein crosses it, are encountered, interstratified with the talcose schists, several narrow bands of a granular quartzose schist, corresponding precisely in character to the itacolumite of Humboldt, supposed to be the gangue of the diamond. No diamonds have however, to my knowledge, yet been found in this immediate neighborhood, although known localities of the gem are not far distant. In places this itacolumite is highly granular and friable, and would be called a saccharoid quartz schist. Such specimens call strongly to mind the so-called flexible sandstone of Mc Dowell Co., N. C., but no flexible specimens were observed. Following the vein northwardly from the road, the outcrop was found to descend rapidly along the western slope of Cross' Mountain, and at about a quarter of a mile from the road was found a spot where the ground consisted in great part of fragments of the black cobaltiferous substance. Openings properly made here would probably lead to interesting and valuable developments. A determination of the quantity of mixed oxyds of cobalt and nickel contained in the mineral found at this spot, gave 13.26 per cent. The presence of oxyd of nickel in considerable proportion in this mixture was proved by the method of Liebig, that is, by passing for some time, in the cold, a strong current of chlorine gas through the solution of the mixed oxyds, to which has been previously added large excesses of cyanid of potassium and caustic soda, the nickel being thus thrown down as a black precipitate of Ni2O3. No quantitative determination of the proportion of oxyd of nickel, however, has yet been made.

*

* Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, lxxxvii, 128.

This Cross' Mountain gozzan was found, by qualitative analy sis, to contain besides cobalt, nickel, manganese and iron, small quantities of copper, bismuth, zinc, lime, alumina, magnesia and glucina. Traces of sulphur were also ascertained by Mr. Jas. R. Brant, to whom I am indebted for some assistance in the examinations. No traces of arsenic could be found.

In the mineral from the Asbury shaft, qualitative examination. detected iron, manganese, cobalt, nickel, copper, bismuth, zinc, alumina, silica, lime and magnesia, besides traces of something which seemed to give the reactions of tellurium.* Sulphur in traces was found by Mr. Brant, but arsenic was sought for with

out success.

The substance from the Ormond Ore Bank may be called a cobaltiferous earthy manganese, or granular and amorphous hausmannite. It gives with chlorohydric acid a deep brown-black solution with evolution of chlorine (like hausmannite), which so

That this is really tellurium seems more probable in view of the unmistakeable indications obtained of the presence of the allied element, bismuth. These two elements, which form the connecting links between the arsenic and sulphur groups, seem, like Ni and Co, Ag and Pb, or Br and I, to preserve (at least in our American localities) a certain degree of concomitance in their occurrence. Thus the first known locality of both Bi and Te in the United States was announced by Prof. B. Silliman, Sen., in the first volume of the Am. Jour. of Science, p. 312, at Huntington, Conn. No further discovery of Te in the United States was recorded until Dr. Jackson's announcement of its existence at Whitehall, near Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania Co., Va., in the Am. J. Science for May, 1848, in the form of tellurid of bismuth or tetradymite. Since then tetradymite has been found at other Virginian localities, as the "Tellurium Mine," Fluvanna Co., and the "Monroe Mine," Stafford Co., and by Genth at several places in North Carolina, as at the "Phoenix" and Boger Mines" in Cabarrus Co., and near the "Washington Mine" in Davidson Co. The only South American specimen yet described containing Te was a tellurid of Bi brought to Paris by Claussen from San José in Brazil, in which Damour found 79 p. c. Bi and 16 p. c. Te, with a little Se and S (see Ann. de Ch. et de. Ph., [3], xiii, 372). Bismuth, which, it will be observed, was found in small quantity in each of the three specimens examined, appears to be a rather common constituent of our crystalline schists. Besides the "Bismuth Mine" at Huntington, Conn., before alluded to, and the other long known localities at Trumbull and Monroe, Shepard has found it at Haddam, Conn. (Am. J. Sc., [2], xii, 220) and Jackson at the “Lubec Lead Mines" in Maine. The locality at "Brewer's Mine" in Chesterfield District, S. C., the bismutite from which was analyzed by Rammelsberg (Pogg. Ann., lxxvi, 564) and Genth (Am. J. Sci., [2], xxiii, 426) has long been known. In Genth's analysis an appreciable quantity of Te was found. Besides the several localities of tetradymite in Virginia and North Carolina before mentioned, Genth found bismuthine at Gold Hill, Rowan Co., N. C. (Am. J. Sci., [2], xix, 16), and Jackson states that bismuth ochre occurs with the Virginian tetradymites (Dana's Mineralogy, p. 141), and moreover, Genth has very recently (Am. J. Sci., [2], xxiii, 427, May, 1857) brought forward as a new locality of bismutite in North Carolina, Gaston County itself, where he says it was discovered by Dr. Asbury of Charlotte, the gentleman, if I mistake not, from whom the "Asbury Shaft" derives its name. Genth obtained indications of the presence of tellurium.

In this also

With regard to South American localities of bismuth, besides the above-mentioned Brazilian tellurid of Damour, two others have thus far been recorded; one of which is at the mine of San Antonio, near Copiapo, Chili, whence was obtained a bismuthet of silver, containing, according to analysis of Domeyko, 10 p. c. of Bi, (Dana, p. 16), and the other is Rammelsberg's chiviatite, from Chiviato, Peru, a sulphid of Pb, Cu and Bi, containing 61 p. c. of Bi (Dana, p. 77).

lution contained iron, manganese, cobalt, nickel, copper, bismuth, alumina, glucina, and traces of baryta, lead and magnesia. There were in this also traces of sulphur, but no arsenic.

The Asbury Shaft and Cross' Mountain minerals give deep beautiful grass-green solutions in chlorohydric acid, with evolution of chlorine, which solutions become yellow-brown on adding water, a behavior characteristic of solutions containing considerable quantities of cobalt with iron, and by which these cobaltiferous wads may generally be distinguished from ordinary earthy manganese containing but traces of cobalt or none.

As to the nature of the unaltered mineral, from which these cobaltiferous gozzans have been derived by oxydation, it is possible to form a very probable hypothesis. The absence of arsenic, not only from these, but from many other minerals that I have examined from this region,* leads to the conclusion that this unaltered mineral must be a sulphid, and not an arseniet of cobalt and nickel, and the great resemblance of these substances to the cobalt and nickel ore from Mine la Motte in Missouri, which is also a product of oxydation, is presumptive evidence that the original mineral may be identical with, or at least similar to, the one existing there. Now this original mineral at Mine la Motte has recently been found by Dr. Gentht to be siegenite, containing 30.53 per cent of nickel and 21.34 of cobalt, together with iron and traces of lead, copper and antimony. The fact that the products of oxydation at the Cross' Mountain locality contain but 13 per cent of oxyds of cobalt and nickel is not against this hypothesis, for in the oxydation of such a mixture of sulphids, the produced sulphates of cobalt and nickel, particularly the latter, would be in great measure washed away,‡

* Arsenic indeed appears to be a sparsely distributed constituent of the schists of the Carolinas. Hardly any reliable analytical evidences of its occurrence in these latitudes are in existence. We have, however, one such evidence. A mineral found in minute quantities at the bismuth locality in Chesterfield District, S. Carolina, on analysis by Dr. Genth proved to be a sulpharsenate of sulphid of copper, most probably identical with the Peruvian species enargite (Am. J. Science, [2], xxiii, 420). Dana also (p. 62) mentions one specimen of leucopyrite found in Randolph Co., N. C.

Am. Jour. Science, [2], xxiii, 419.

It will be remembered that these two sulphates occur naturally, as bieberite and pyromeline, both products of oxydation of their corresponding sulphids. With regard to the relative tendencies of cobalt and nickel, when in neutral or acid solution, to undergo oxydation and precipitation as cobaltic and nicklic oxyds, our knowledge is rather meagre, but still experimental evidence bearing upon this point is not wholly wanting. Thus Dr. Gibbs found (Am. J. Science, [2], xiv, 205) that deutoxyd of lead partially oxydizes and precipitates Co from its solutions, but Ni not at all. This suffices to account for the fact that among the numerous analyses of wads, earthy cobalts and bog manganese ores on record, the presence of Ni is seldom or never indicated. The reason why, in alkaline solutions, as in the presence of an excess of ammonia or cyanid of potassium, the reverse action takes place, and the Ni is thrown down, while the Co remains in solution, is simply the eminent capacity which cobaltic oxyd possesses to form soluble double salts and conjugated compounds, a tendency apparently not shared by nicklic oxyd.

whilst the iron and manganese, passing to higher states of oxydation, would remain behind in insoluble forms. I cannot therefore refrain from offering the hypothesis that these veins, when opened to a depth below the influence of surface oxydation, will be found to contain either siegenite, or some nearly related species. As relevant to this view, I may cite the fact that Dr. Genth has recently discovered siegenite, associated with chalcopyrite, pyrites, blende, etc., in the vein worked at the Mineral Hill Mine, Carroll Co., Md., in the same range of metamorphic schists as these North Carolina localities.

The only place in this neighborhood where a vein has been opened to a sufficient depth to expose the character of the unaltered ore, is what is called the "Bronson Shaft," at the Long Creek Mines, which has been recently worked for gold by a New York company, and is situated about half a mile southwesterly from the Asbury Shaft, and either on the same vein with the latter or on a closely parallel one. At this spot, however, unfortunately none of the black cobaltiferous substance occurs with the ore. I examined this mine and found that near the surface and above water level, the mineral mixed with the quartz gangue of the vein is principally limonite, as usual. Below water level, or about forty feet from the surface, the limonite begins to disappear, and the vein gradually assumes the character of a porous mass of quartz filled with strings and bunches of pyrites and "vugs" or cavities lined with crystals of the same, sometimes of the octahedral variety. Beautiful specimens were found containing contiguous cavities, some lined with cubic, and others with octahedral crystals, in the same specimen. The whole mass of the vein is here saturated, of course, with water. On descending to the bottom of the shaft, about 140 feet from the surface, the vein is first found compact and apparently unaltered, being here about eight feet wide, and composed of a mixture of quartz and pyrrhotine.

This pyrrhotine contains, however, but traces of cobalt and nickel. I wish to ask here whether it is not evident from the above facts, that the pyrites, as well as the limonite, found in the upper part of the Bronson shaft, is clearly a product of the action of aerated water upon the pyrrhotine? The pyrrhotine is compact and massive, with a granular fracture,† and no specimens were found in the bottom of the shaft presenting indications of crystallization, whilst all the pyrites found above presents, as before stated, an eminently crystalline structure, an in* Am. Jour. of Science, [2], xxiii, 418.

The fractured surface presents a number of small patches of chalcopyrite. I may mention here that Prof. Emmons, in his recent Geological Report on North Carolina (pp. 167, 168) calls this pyrrhotine of the Long Creek Mines 'arsenical pyrites." I could find, however, no trace of arsenic. It almost wholly dissolves in warm chlorohydric acid with copious evolution of sulphohydric gas.