COMMUNICATIONS. 505 



County, Wisconsin, made by me for the North-West Iron Com- 

 pany, for publication, by permission of the company, in the 

 Transactions of the State Agricultural Society of Wisconsin ; 

 and permit me here to state that several years ago I analyzed 

 a specimen of the ore from Iron Ridge for a company then in- 

 terested in that location, which was subsequently published in 

 Prof. Owen's Report on the Geology of Wisconsin ; but said 

 analysis was too incomplete to appear in such a publication, 

 the object being simply to ascertain the per eentage of the 

 iron in the ore, without any reference to its other constituents. 



The Iron Ridge, as it is called, is situated in Dodge County, 

 Wisconsin ; runs nearly north and south ; and the location 

 where the North West Iron Company is now mining the ore, 

 from which the specimens analyzed were obtained, is about 

 two miles north of the Iron Ridge station on the La Crosse and 

 Milwaukee rail-road. The ledge of limestone rock which in 

 most places overlies the ore, here disappears, and the bed ex- 

 tends from the brink of the hill on its western face, back sev- 

 eral rods dipping towards the east, the stripping on the 

 top increasing in thickness as the mine i3 extended into the 

 bank. The western face of the hill slopes off, and the ore has 

 been carried down from the old bed at the top of the hill 

 and deposited on the side and at the foot of the hill by 

 action of rains, &c., in sufficient quantity to be worked. Tha 

 ore as found in place in the upper bed, appear to 

 have been deposited in strata or layers, while the grains of ore 

 which to the naked eye appears smaller than flax seed and of 

 the same color, but viewed through a pocket lens, exhibit the 

 shape of kernels of coffee, the surface being smooth and pol- 

 ished flatwise of the bed. The ore at the foot and on the 

 sides of the hill as well as that at the top of the hill lies loose 

 and may be shoveled out like loose gravel ; but that occupying 

 the inner and lower part of the upper bed beyond the reach 

 of weather influences is so compact as to require the use of the 

 pick in mining. 



The upper bed as the work is extended into the hill varies 



from ten to sixteen feet in thickness. That on the side-hill 



has a depth of from one to six or eight feet. 

 3j 



