TWEyTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 253 



the loess or iu the rock outcrops. There are differences of quality, easily 

 determinable by trial. It would appear, from the proved character of vitri- 

 fied bricks, that they will be a standard pavement of the future. Wyan- 

 dotte will have its share of this important industry. 



Pottery clays are not so common; but they may be found, and that suitable 

 for drainage tiles and sewer pipes is abundant. 



In this midcontinental region, far I'emoved from the roofing slates of the 

 mountains, why should not a light roofing tile be manufactured and used? 

 The clays of the river counties are sufficient to roof all the cities of the Mis- 

 sissippi valley. 



The metallic base of clay is the metal 



ALUMINUM, 



which has of late years become familiar in medals, pencil holders, etc. In 

 clay it is mostly in the form of alumina, which is the metal combined with 

 oxygen. Abundant in all clays, the separation of the metal is, as yet, an ex- 

 pensive process. A particular kind of clay, found mostly in two small dis- 

 tricts in England, and called fullers' earth, has long been used for cleansing 

 by woolen manufacturers. It has also been used in refining lard, and much of 

 it has been imported for that purpose by the packinghouses of Kansas City. 

 For some time past a bed of surface clay at Turner has been subjected to a 

 peculiar process by Mr. Schwann, in which the percentage of alumina is in- 

 creased and other matters eliminated. The resultant product has the 

 same effect in the refining of lard that fuller's earth had, and it is now sup- 

 planting that material in the packinghouses of this county. 



This artificial fuller's earth, containing a large percentage of alumina, 

 may be called, in miners' language, a concentrated ore of aluminum; and it 

 has occurred to Mr. Schwann that it may so be regarded, and that processes 

 akin to the common methods known to the assayer and refiner of the 

 precious metals would reduce the ore and produce aluminum at less outlay 

 than that of the present costly electrical process of extracting the metal from 

 the bauxite. His experiments have been perfectly successful, and there is 

 now lying before the writer a small button of the metal thus made at the 

 Turner smelter from Wyandotte county clay. The only step now to take is the 

 making available, on a large scale, of the proper appliances for extracting 

 the metal from the ore, and Wyandotte county will add another metal in- 

 dustry to the already large one of the silver smelter at Argentine, which has 

 already refined over 9,000,000 ounces of silver. 



GRAVEL. 



There is, in the Neosho and in other valleys of southeastern Kansas a 

 gravel, not made of rounded pebbles, but of stony fragments, more or less 

 angular, but covered with a brown coat having a vitreous luster. The 

 fragments are made mostly of limestone, but some are chert or fiint. But 

 all have the same ferruginous vitrified coating. They make better road ma- 

 terial than any crushed stone in Kansas. This gravel is found in some of 

 the watercourses of Wyandotte county, and in places it is found cropping as 

 a thin sti-atum under the loess, and on some slopes. It has been quarried to 

 some extent near Edwardsville, and search would probably reveal it about 

 Bonner Springs and northward. 



The gravels of the drift, composed of quartzite and granite pebbles, are 

 found under the loess in all parts of the county, but probably the deposits are 

 nowhere very thick. The larger boulders of quartzite — the well-known pink 



