THE MINERAL COLLECTOR. 



301 



a distance, are a good sized iron furnace 

 with black iron stacks and a square 

 building of white concrete which turns 

 out to be the power house that supplies 

 the mines some distance away. This 

 power house, by the way, is located 

 along the lake shore on an exceedingly 

 flat topped promontory that on closer 

 inspection is found to be an old dump of 

 blast furnace slag. Three more iron 

 furnaces once stood along this shore 

 line, but all have now disappeared save 

 one which, nevertheless, is working 

 energetically at present. Back of the 

 shore line the hills rise somewhat 

 abruptly. As we go from this point 

 further west the hills rapidly increase 

 in height and finally become the Adi- 

 rondacks. 



The great ore bodies of this part of 

 the Adirondacks are located at Mine- 

 ville, about six miles west of Port 

 Henry, at an altitude of thirteen hun- 

 dred feet above the sea. The ore is 

 magnetite arranged in lenses or pod- 

 shaped bodies in the old gneisses of the 

 mountains. For many years these de- 

 posits have been mined. The old meth- 

 ods were, as usual, wasteful and failed 

 to remove much good and easily acces- 

 sible ore. This was especially true of 

 Barton Hill, a small hill or mountain 

 from which much ore was taken, the 

 working in which was subsequently 

 abandoned and became flooded with 

 water. About two years ago a narrow 

 tunnel was run into the hill from the 

 valley below, tapping the old workings 

 and running off almost all the accumu- 

 lated water so that no pumping had to 

 be done. The same tunnel keeps the 

 mine always dry. The Barton Hill 

 Mine deserves our special attention 

 since it is the locality whence came the 

 wonderful little magnetite octahedrons 

 that have made Mineville famous 

 among collectors. Much of the ore 

 (magnetite) is very coarsely crystal- 

 line, and careful pounding will often 

 disclose some grains which show a 

 very well developed, though modified, 

 octahedral form. The best octahedrons 

 were, however, found in a schistose 

 rock. The largest one of these ever 

 found, it is claimed, is now owned by 

 the company operating the mine. This 

 crvstal is an octahedron, one and one- 



half inches on each edge, and so per- 

 fect that it is said to fit perfectly into 

 its niche in the matrix, no matter which 

 side goes in first. 



Much of the ore at Barton Hill has 

 fluorite associated with it, grains of 

 fluorite and magnetite being intermin- 

 gled. The fluorite is never purple but 

 is light green in color. Apatite also 

 occurs similarly, in quantity, rendering 

 some of the ore quite red in color and 

 unfit for processes in which an ore low 

 in phosphorus is required. Much ore is 

 also titaniferous, the titanite occurring 

 in the ore like the fluorite and the apa- 

 tite. However, the grains of titanite 

 are quite crystalline and often very 

 perfect crystals are formed of quite 

 large size. One was found of more 

 than one inch in diameter, and a frag- 

 ment of another one that must have 

 been two and one-half inches across. 

 These titanites occur with the mag- 

 netite, augite (good black crystals) and 

 crystalline calcite, making very attrac- 

 tive specimens. Scapolite appears in 

 fine light green crystals of perfect de- 

 velopment, often in groups several 

 inches in length. Garnet crystals occa- 

 sionally show zircon and feldspars 

 come together. 



Another opening near Barton Hill is 

 "Mine 21," which is working a nearby 

 deposit of similar ore. Some coarse 

 pegmatite was encountered in this 

 mine, in which are many zircon crystals 

 of fine development. They show the 

 usual tetragonal prism, but they have 

 developed two pyramids (both of the 

 same order as the prism), instead of 

 one, as is usually the case. These 

 zircons are altered to a gray color, and 

 around each crystal in the quartz and 

 feldspar is a slight red spot and a series 

 of radiating cracks, such as are des- 

 cribed by Mr. E. T. Wherry in his 

 report on the radio-active minerals of 

 Pennsylvania. "Mine 21" consists of 

 a great open cut three hundred and fifty 

 feet deep, from which branch out tun- 

 nels connecting it with the other near- 

 by mines. 



Another opening near Mineville, evi- 

 dently the Sanford ore bed, produces 

 fine large crystals of allanite, also in 

 coarse pegmatite. 



At Port Henrv, on the shore of the 



