7. Masses of white amorphous gypsum, picked up among the rocks beneath the falls. They are opaque, and seem to be produced in small pieces only; as the pyrites undergo partial decomposition here and there among the strata. In some places sulphureous oozings and discolorabe seen near the bottom.

tions

may

8. Gypsum and lime-stone in their natural connection. The appearance is exactly as I found it at the foot of the great cataract. The mode of connection between the carbonate and sulphate, contiguous without mixture, is worthy of notice. These and the preceding (No. 7,) are the substances vulgarly and erroneously denominated "the petrified froth of the falls."

9. Lamellar or plated gypsum of an almost transparent quality, found at the foundation of the rocks, below the cipice of the great fall.

pre

10. Silicious earth of the quartzy kind, connected side by side with calcareous carbonate, or the swine-stone of the region. On this are seen small crystals that scratch glass, and vestiges of the semi-transparent crystallization of No. 3 and 4.

11. White amorphous flint, with lime-stone.

12. Crystals of quartz broken from a silicious incrustation of a calcareous rock.

13. Black flint, or gun flint-such as abounds at Blackrock and in the Seneka prairies, imbedded in lime-stone, but not incorporated with it. This forms distinct lumps or parcels, and is employed for musquets.

14. Lime-stone with petrifactions. They appear to be corallines and madrepores-from the neighbourhood of Fort Erie, above the falls.

15. Native brimstone from the Clifton-springs, eleven miles northwest of Geneva. Waggon loads of it lie on the surface of the ground. It seems to be a deposition from a water that rises very transparent, but emits a strong sulphureous odour.

16. Moss incrusted with sulphur. The water of these copious springs lets fall the brimstone freely on every thing it touches. But plants are not at all injured by it. They appear to vegetate perfectly well, and without sustaining the smallest inconvenience. Various animals live in it. Horses and cattle drink it freely like common water.

17. Lime-stone and sulphur, and calcareous sulphuret, as deposited at the Clifton springs.

18. Lime-stone from the stream of spring water, where it ran briskly, with its deposit of calcareous and sulphureous

matter.

19. Marine exuviæ consolidated in lime-stone, from the bottom of the sulphureous stream. The surface of this remarkable specimen is covered by brimstone deposited from the water.

20. The marine production, commonly called "petrified wasp's nest," or "honey-comb." I have a sample of this impregnated with pyrites, and penetrated by the petroleum called Seneka, or Genessee oil.

21. A piece of the dark striated quartzy rock, forming silicious strata at the little falls of the Mohawk river, where the locks have been established by the western inland navigation company. At this place there was, in all probability, a natural dam in ancient days, which raised the water high enough to inundate the German Flats, and the low lands extending toward Utica. Besides the obvious and plain appearances of things, the water-worn holes in those unusually compact strata of silicious rocks, forty or fifty feet above the present level of the river, would seem to be conclusive proof of the great height to which the water of the Mohawk in former times, attained.

22. Sample of the silicious rock from the town of Amsterdam, on the Mohawk river. Nodules with quartz and scharl, quartz and garnet, and other granitical compounds, are frequent hereabout and lower down toward Schenectady.

23. Quartz and garnet, and perhaps quartz and amethyst, from the Nose, a projecting mountain in Johnstown, north of the Mohawk.

24. An uncommon association of amianthus, graphite and quartz, from the neighbourhood of Ballstown springs.

II. Observations on the FRANCONIA IRON WORKS by Colonel GIBBS.

FRANCONIA lies eight miles East from Connecticut River,

in New-Hampshire. The country is mountainous, being part of the chain of the White Mountains. The Iron Works here have been constructed within two years, by a company of gentlemen, chiefly of Salem. The capital employed is said to be about $ 100,000 dollars. There is at present one furnace, four forges, and two work-shops. The furnace is of that kind called Quarter Furnace. The blast is from two cylinder bellows, and in the forges the same improvement is about being adopted. There is manufactured here, bar iron, hollow ware, and a great variety of articles for the consumption of the country. As this town lies so remote from the sea coast, being 130 miles from Boston, there is a great and increasing demand for iron, and the proprietors will without doubt find it their interest to increase their establishment. On account of the vicinity of the mountains, charcoal may be purchased very low; the company own about 5,000 acres of land in the neighbourhood, which will afford them a sure and inexhaustible supply.

The ore is procured from a bed about four miles distant. The bed traverses a hill and is worked au jour. It is from five to eight feet thick in a Gneiss which alternates with Granite and primitive Greenstone. The direction is N. N. E. and S. S. W. like all the primitive Strata of New-England; the inclination perpendicular. This bed has been traced some dis

tance, and promises to afford an abundant supply. Another has been found near it, but not so promising. The mineral is the magnetic iron ore (fer oligiste of Hauy.) It is found compact, and fine grained. The colour is a bluish grey, the powder nearly black; this ore is similar to the Swedish, and the same species which furnishes Europe and America with their best iron. In the same bed is found an abundance of crystallized and amorphous Red Garnet, Epidote of a light yellow colour, and Amphibole. The crystals of the Epidote are acicular, and interwoven confusedly.—In the neighbourhood is found a greyish granular limestone, which serves at the furnace as a flux; the Garnet found with the ore might be used for the same purpose.-This like other magnetic ores is refractory in the fire; but it probably would be less so if the modern improvements in furnaces were attended to.

The quarter furnace so called, used in this country, is generally about twenty-six feet high,and little attention is paid, notwithstanding its importance, to the form of the interior. The furnaces in Europe are from forty to forty-five feet high, and the internal proportions generally constant. In the more fusible and in the purer ores, such as the hematites and the spathose iron, the quarter furnace is less objectionable; but the operation of heat should be more gradual on the refractory and the impure ores. This is the effect of the high furnace, as it takes one-third more time for the ore to descend to the blast. It is then less necessary to roast the ore, and the remnant of sulphur is disengaged more freely, and other foreign substances evaporated or scorified. As the diameter is also proportionally increased, less heat is lost, and the produce of the high furnace will be greater.

There is another improvement which might be adopted, with advantage, in this country; it is that of leaving only one opening, and drawing off the scories and the metal together. It is thus managed.—A bed is made of powdered charcoal well beat down and surrounded by a border of the same; this receives the liquid metal about an inch deep. As the

scories are lighter, they soon rise to the surface; a workman sprinkles them lightly with water, which hardens them, and they are drawn aside by hooks.-The iron when hardened is easily broken and carried off. By this method a great proportion of the iron contained in the scories (which is sometimes considerable enough to be melted a second time) is saved.

The castings at this furnace are, from lightness, neatness and strength, equal if not superior to any imported.The steel furnace was just prepared.-The bar iron is of good quality in general, but some of it I am told is red short. This defect it is supposed arises from some other metal of different fusibility alloying the iron, so that when the bar has the red heat, the foreign metal being more or less affected than iron, separates, and the continuity of parts is destroyed. The remedy for this is simply to work the iron at a white heat, and also at one lower than the red heat. This species of iron so forged has then a greater tenacity than any other iron. The metal which forms the alloy is by some considered to be arsenic and by others copper, but I am led to believe that in this case it is titanium.

III. Description and Analysis of an Ore of Lead from Louisiana. By W. MEADE, M. D.

HAVING been favoured with a good specimen of lead

ore from the mines at St. Genevieve on the Mississippi, and being desirous of ascertaining its constituent parts and productive quality, I submitted it to a careful analysis in the moist way as the most accurate, according to the example of Klaproth.

It is to be regretted that the country which affords this abundant and productive ore, has not as yet been described by any Mineralogist.