lii GENERAL SUxMMAKY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



and New Jersey has also been increased ; and the scarcely 

 less valuable brown hematite ores of the great Appalachian 

 valley, from Vermont to Alabama, are also extensively mined. 



The recent completion of the Chesapeake and Ohio Rail- 

 road, from the Ohio to tide-water, lias made more accessible 

 the very valuable coal-field along the Kanawha, in West Vir- 

 ^inia, from which certain valuable kinds of coal are now 

 shipped to Richmond, Virginia, and thence to New York. 

 The opening of new railroads in southeastern Ohio has also 

 rendered more accessible the remarkable coal-field of the 

 Hocking valley in that state, and large quantities of free- 

 burning coal of great excellence are now shipped to the 

 north and northwest from this region. The coals of the Cre- 

 taceous formation in the Rocky Mountain region are in great 

 part of the nature of lignite, and, although capable of being 

 used for the generation of steam and for domestic purposes, 

 are unfit for smelting operations in shaft or blast furnaces, 

 and can not be made into coke. To supply these wants, 

 charcoal has hitherto been used in Nevada, Avhile coke is 

 shipped at great cost from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, to 

 Utah. Mr. Eclers has lately discovered that the Cretaceous 

 coal from Trinidad, Colorado, yields an excellent coke, which 

 it is thought may be fit even for iron-smelting. Other dis- 

 coveries of a similar kind are reported in that region, a fact 

 of great importance for the metallurgical industry of the 

 West. 



The deposits of native copper on the south shore of Lake 

 Superior continue to be worked with great success, and the 

 Calumet and Ilecla mine will yield for the year not less than 

 10,000 tons of metallic copper. Attention has been called 

 by Dr. Hunt to the copper ores in the crystalline rocks of the 

 Blue Ridge, especially those of Ducktown, Polk County, Ten- 

 nessee; of Ore Knob, Ashe County, North Carolina; and of 

 Carroll County,Virginia. He concludes that these great ac- 

 cumulations of sulphuretted ores, even when, as at Ducktown, 

 apparently conformable to the inclosing rocks, are really of 

 posterior origin, and are concretionary deposits, similar in 

 the manner of their formation to transverse lodes. The mine 

 recently opened at Ore Knob, in North Carolina, is itself 

 clearly a fissure-lode of great length and breadth, occupied 

 by a massive ore, yielding twenty-five per cent, of copper. 



