636 KNOWLTON: FossiL FRUITS AND 
the topography and geological associations of this carbonaceous 
deposit.” 
Geologists are aware that along the west base of the Green and 
Hoosac Mountains, from Canada to New York, occur numerous 
beds of brown compact and fibrous hematite iron ore. That in 
Brandon lies between two and three miles of the village ; the Sue 
face rises slightly and exhibits clay, drift and limestone rock in 
place. According to my measurements with the anéroid barom- 
eter, Brandon village is 465 feet above the ocean, and the ps: 
mine 520 feet above the same. A short distance east of the mine 
the Green Mountains rise rapidly. : 
At this spot we find the following varieties of substances in 
juxtaposition : 
1. Beautiful kaolin and clays, colored yellow by ochre, rose- 
color by manganese (?), and dark by carbon. 
2. Brown hematite and yellow ochre. 
Ores of manganese. 
Brown coal. 
Beds of gravel connected with the clays. 
Drift overlying the whole. 
7. Yellowish limestone underlying the whole. 
The position of the clays is difficult to determine exactly, as 
there seems to have been a good deal of disturbance of the strata, 
perhaps only the result of slides. The coal, in a few places, shows 
itself on the surface. In one spot a shaft has been carried through 
it only a few feet below the surface, and this has also been done 
to the same bed nearly 100 feet below the surface. In both places 
it was about 20 feet thick. I found it to be the conviction of ARE 
miners that the mass of coal formed a square column of that thick- 
ness descending almost perpendicularly into the earth, in the midst 
of the clay. My own impression was that it is a portion of an = 
tensive bed, having a dip very largely towards the northwest ; 
perhaps separated from other portions of the bed by some distur” 
bance of strata. ; 
From the above account it will be observed that this ore 
has the appearance of almost complete isolation in the midst . 
much older and totally different strata, and it is not strange that! : 
excited the attention and wonder of geologists, and the question ©" 
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