308 



February 17, 1853. 



Dr. C. T. Jackson, Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Mr. Sprague read a communication on Opiiiocaryon 

 'paradoxum, a nut of which had been recently presented to 

 the Society, and exhibited several carefully-executed draw- 

 ings of the specimen. 



Dr. C. T. Jackson alluded to the circumstance that the 

 New Jersey Mines, known as the '^ Sterling Mines," have 

 been supposed to have been opened by the younger Lord 

 Sterling, and statements to this effect are quite common in 

 books. Having some curiosity to decide the point, while on 

 a visit to these w^orkings, he had obtained a section of a 

 cedar tree growing in such a position that its growth must 

 have been subsequent to the working of the mines. The 

 tree had been dead twenty years, and was found, by count- 

 ing its rings, to have been seventy-four years old. As 

 Lord Sterling died in 1783, thirty-three or thirty-five years 

 old, it is therefore impossible that he was the first to work 

 these mines. They probably were opened by a party of 

 Nassau miners, who explored the State for mining purposes 

 in 1640. Dr. Jackson had received the first suggestion of 

 this from Major Farrington, and it was confirmed by his 

 own examination of the tree in question. 



Dr. Jackson stated that the New Jersey Franklinite is 

 deposited in a white crystalline limestone, which is included 

 in an igneous rock of sienitic character analogous to trap 

 rock. This limestone has been regarded as a metamorphic 

 rock, but he himself believed it to be an igneous rock like 

 calcareous spar, which was, in his opinion, of igneous 

 origin. On the shores of Lake Superior, calcareous veins 

 may be seen, producing analogous changes in the adjoining 

 rock to those caused by undoubted igneous rocks. Dr. 



