No. 63.] ' 213 



productions calculated for the New-York market. These people also 

 occupy themselves in fishing, digging clams and raking oysters. 



Few or no minerals of any value have been found in the county. 

 Near Rossville, in the township of Westfield, not long since, some 

 persons were possessed with the idea of a coal mine, because some 

 pieces of coal ha<l there been found. But upon examination it prov- 

 ed to be lionite, or wood carbonized by the decomposition of pyrites, 

 similar specimens of which are seen in clay beds on Long-Island and 

 in New-Jersey. 



During the last war with Great Britain, while the forts at the nar- 

 rows were in process of erection, detached pieces of pure virgin cop- 

 per were found in excavating the hill below Fort Richmond on this 

 island. They were deep among the materials of the upland diluvi- 

 um, and were not accidentally dropped there, but must have been 

 brought from the north. 



In the hilly parts of the island, in the township of Castleton, there 

 are beds of hematitic iron ore. This deposit of ore was once woik- 

 ed, but the per centage of iron in it is so small, that the raising it 

 from its bed is not profitable and has been abandoned. 



From all appearances, the rocky formation of Richmond county is 

 coeval in part with the formation of the serpentine lock of Hoboken, 

 and in part with the greenstone or trap rocks on the Hudson river, 

 and the red sandstone which underlays them. 



The hilly part of the island is principally in the township of Cas- 

 tleton, the highest part of which, near the Quarantine hospitals, is 307 

 feet above tide water. A spur of the hill extends along the eastern 

 shore to Fort Richmond, in Southfield. From thence it falls off to 

 the southwest to New Dorp plain, which extends several miles and 

 terminates at the Great Kills. The remainder of the island is rolling 

 land, none of it higher than from one hundred to one hundred and 

 fifty feet above the sea. These low hills have no precipitous sides, 

 and are susceptible of cultivation over the whole surface. 



There are some swamps and uncleared bog lands containing peat, 

 but no one except William A. Seely, has made any use of peat. He 

 drained such a swamp, and by littering his hog pens and barn-yards 

 with it, he has supplied himself, in conjunction with sea weed, with 

 an abundance of manure. Some other farmers, however, have used 

 the muck from the bottoms of ponds in their wood lands, when they 

 were dry in the autumn, and thus added to their stock of manure, by 

 composting it with the contents of their barn-yards and hog pens. 



The storms of autumn and winter throw upon the southern shores 

 of the island, a black sand which may at times be gathered in large 

 quantities. This is not an earthy but a metallic sand, as on exami- 

 nation it appears to be fine particles of iron ore, and may be separat- 

 ed from the quartzy sand with which it is mixed, by a magnet. 



The roll of the ocean has an action upon the stones and gravel, 

 not only in wearing away their angles, bul in reducing many of them 

 to elliptical shapes. Some of these are so handsomely formed and 

 polished by attrition on the sea shore, that the subscriber forwards 

 herewith a few picked up on his water front. If the Society have 



