No. 7.] APATITE IN NORWAY. 437 



When one considers how very greatly the mineral contents 

 and the external aspect generally of apatite-bearing veins vary, 

 neither the deposits of Asildsdal with their masses of calcspar, 

 nor those of Oxoiekollen with their predominating albite, can 

 offer sufficient grounds for distinguishing these deposits from 

 the other apatite- bearing deposits. For calcspar and apatite are 

 also found in several other deposits ; and in other respect* 

 Asildsdal and Oxoiekollen are not abnormal. 



Also the circumstance that in several deposits one and the 

 same vein sometimes exhibits in its various parts an entirely 

 different mineral composition, can only be another ground for 

 regarding the veins as identical formations. The above instan- 

 ces have proved that all grades of transition occur between those 

 deposits where apatite occurs only sparsely and as an accessory, 

 and others where it forms the chief mineral. This is shown also 

 in one and the same deposit. 



Also in other respects, viz. in the arrangement of the minerals, 

 in the shape of the veins, etc., could a similar transition series 

 be produced as proof of the identical nature of the veins. 



Our apatite deposits are veins. The occurrence of apatite in 

 beds, sometimes forming small strata in the sedimentary rocks, 

 has been described in several countries. In Sweden apatite has 

 been described as a noxious admixture with the iron ores of the 

 Graengesberg, which are said to be "beds" in gneiss. The 

 apatite occurs in our veins in an entirely different manner. 



Our apatite-bearing veins occur without difference in the 

 eruptive, as well as in the stratified rocks of our primary 

 range. In the latter case they are perfectly independent of the 

 strike and dip of the strata, with one exception, viz., the kjerul- 

 fine deposit at Havredal ; which, however, as it agrees in all 

 particulars with the apatite-bearing veins, cannot be sepa- 

 rated from them. The veins traverse gabbro, granite, horn- 

 blende slates and hornblende gneiss, mica schists and quartzite. 

 This fact that perfectly identical veins occur in different rocks 

 (e. g. the characteristic veins of hornblende with apatite and 

 magnetic pyrites occur at Hiasen, etc., in gabbro, and at Hougen, 

 etc., in hornblende slates), seems to us completely to contradict 

 the idea of the veins being formed by separating out from the 

 country-rock (in which way Scheerer has explained the formation 

 of our coarsely crystalline veins of granite). These granite veins, 

 like many of our apatite-bearing veins, show sometimes a sym- 



