242 NutalVs Geological and Mineralogkal Remarh. 



upon them. The first, or eastern bed, which at Franklin 

 appears like a black mountain mass, at least thirty or forty 

 feet wide, consists of an ore of iron, in common, scarcely 

 at all magnetic, and with great propriety considered by 

 Berthier as a new metalliferous combination entitled Frank- 

 linite, contains 66 per cent, of iron, 16 of zinc, and 17 of 

 the red oxyd of manganese. On the supposed richness of 

 this immense bed, the great furnace of Franklin was built ; 

 it was soon, however, discovered not only to be irreducible 

 td metallic iron, but to obstruct the fusion of other better 

 characterized ores in a notable degree. If employed in a 

 quantity exceeding one tenth of the magnetic oxyd of iron 

 with which it \ras economically mixed, the result was what 

 the miners emphatically termed a Salamander^ an alloy of 

 iron, with the manganese, which resisted liquifaction, and 

 crystallized even under the blast, so that all the metal was 

 lost, the hearth demolished, and ten or twelve yoke of oxen 

 necessary to drag away the paradoxical and useless metal 

 produced. 



This deceptive mineral, now abandoned for want of skill 

 to reduce it, occasionally presents cavities lined with regu- 

 lar octahedral crystals, the sides of whose pyramids to each 

 other as well as the angles of the common base measure 

 by the reflecting goniometer, according to Doctor Torrey, 

 angles of 108.15. At Franklin it is but sparingly interming- 

 led with the red oxyd of zinc. In about two miles to the 

 north, the Franklinite bed ceases to be any longer discov- 

 erable at the surface, but continues more or less distinct 

 for five miles further to the southeast, or seven miles in 

 its whole range. Three miles from Franklin furnace, at 

 Stirling, another mountain mass or huge cliff of this forma- 

 tion presents itself; but here the red oxyd of zinc forms, as 

 it were, a paste in which the crystals of Franklinite are 

 thickly imbedded — in fact, a metalliferous porphyry! On 

 the sides of the seams, abundance of octahedral crystals of 

 Franklinite are often well developed, while those of the 

 interior are commonly pseudomorphous. Numerous illini- 

 tions of the carbonate of zinc appear throughout the inte- 

 rior of the mass. This ore, merely pounded and mixed 

 with copper, has been profitably employed, during the 

 scarcity of the late war, for forming brass. 



Often, within a (ew feet to the west of the Franklinite 

 bed, appear others of well characterized magnetic oxyd of 



T 



