148 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [MAR. 18, 
heat, rain, etc. We find places on that ridge where the soil is 
very thin, not averaging perhaps more than two or three feet ; 
but everywhere below the centre of the ridge we find tin, some- 
times in the streams; I have seen as much as eight or ten 
pounds of cassiterite from a miner’s pan containing, say, twenty 
pounds of gravel ; so that, in addition to echoing MR. FURMAN’S 
hope that somewhere in that region we shall find tin which will 
pay to mine, I hope we shall find it in more accessible forms 
than in tin-stone. It is remarkably cheap to work. In the vi- 
cinity of King’s Mountain, there is hardly any winter at all; 
there is considerable rain, but it is rarely that snow lies forty- 
eight hours on the ground, or that there is any freezing-up, so 
as to compel mining operations to stop. We have been paying 
a dollar a cord for good fire-wood, delivered where it is wanted ; 
and a fair miner’s wages there are seventy-five cents to a dollar 
a day ; so that every condition seems favorable, except the un- 
demonstrated condition of finding sufficient ore to work. 
Mr. FurMAN stated,—in reply to a gentleman in the audience 
who asked the height of King’s Mountain,—that the village is 
twelve hundred feet above the sea: the mountain proper is 
about two thousand feet. 
‘Tue Presrpent (Dr. NEwBERRY).—The description of the 
tin deposits of North Carolina given by Mr. FurMAN has inter- 
ested me exceedingly, from the parallelism it shows between the 
structure of that region and that of the tin-bearing districts of 
the Black Hills and other portions of the world. Tin is a metal 
that is very sparsely distributed. The great masses brought 
from Tasmania, shown at the Centennial Exhibition, were quite 
phenomenal, and it is not at all surprising that we do not find 
it in such masses here. It is still an open question whether tin 
can be profitably worked in the Black Hills; the quantity is 
enormous, and yet it remains to be seen whether metal enough 
can be got out of each cubic yard of those great veins to pay the 
cost. Certainly the conditions in North Carolina seem to be 
much more favorable. 
The tin that has come to us from various parts of the world 
has all been taken from surface deposits, except that of Corn- 
wall; there it has been regularly mined as iron and gold are 
