1857.] Lime in Compost Heaps. 57 



the East Tennessee Railroad, the nearest point at which railroad 

 transportation can be reached. The earlier shipments hud to be 

 made to Dalton, Georgia, a distance of seventy-four miles. Not- 

 withstanding these inconveniences, there had been 14,291 tuns of 

 copper ores shipped from the Ducktown mines, before the close of 

 1855, which was sold for more than a million of dollars. 



To judge of the productive capacity of these mines, it need only 

 be said, that, in the month of September, 1855, seven mines produced 

 a little more than 807^ tuns of ore, the value of which was about 

 $80,000, or at the rate of nearly a million dollars per annum. 



It may here be explained, that the copper mines of Tennessee 

 and North Carolina, including those belonging to your Association, 

 differ very essentially from those of the Lake Superior region. The 

 copper veins of Lake Superior contain, often, a very large propor- 

 tion of native copper, which can not be removed from the mines by 

 drilling and blasting. A charge of powder, instead of fracturing 

 the native copper in which it is inserted, merely shoots out the tamp- 

 ing, as the wadding is shot from an ordinary brass cannon, or the ball 

 from a Sharpe's rifle. The slow process of cutting it up by the 

 chisel is the only remedy. On the contrary, the Tennessee and North 

 Carolina copper veins contain nothing but brittle ores, which are as 

 easily fractured as common limestone, and a miner can throw out as 

 many perch of it in a day as he could of ordinary limestone rock, 

 excepting that the drilling, at times, may be more tedious. — Report 

 of David Christy on the lEning lands of the Nautahala and Tuck- 

 asege Copper Associations. 



LIME IN COMPOST HEAPS. 



A Correspondent, from Fredericktown, 0., inquires, " What is the 

 benefit to be derived from mixing lime with compost heaps'?" The 

 inquiry is a proper and an important one ; we therefore answer with 

 pleasure. 



Lime is strongly alkaline ; only potash and soda excel it in this 

 respect, unless it be in the case of some rare earths. All alkalis 

 have a very strong attraction for acids, and also for water. As most 

 vegetable matter is made of charcoal (carbon) and water, the lime, 

 in trying to get a drink, (for it is an excessively thirsty customer) 

 decomposes them and leaves the carbonaceous matter free. This is 



