93 



the dimensions of which, where it has been explored, appear to 

 be too inconsiderable to render it an object of profit. It is 

 crystalline and of a pretty pure opaque white, and has been met 

 with in two separate spots contiguous to each other. The 

 locality is near the disturbed anticlinal axis of the narrow belt of 

 blue limestone, immediately northwest of the main range of slate 

 next northwest of Newton, being removed from the principal 

 Paulinskill tract of limestone by a narrow intermediate synclinal 

 zone of slate. 



Upon the site of one of the excavations made some years 

 since for this mineral, a very absurd mining project was under- 

 taken, not to procure the sulphate of barytes, which, if abundant, 

 might repay the miner, but in the futile hope of revealing a mine 

 of silver. Every informed geologist or scientific miner would 

 pronounce at once, from all the mineral indications here present, 

 and from the nature of this and the other rocks, that such attempts 

 at mining for the precious metals in these strata are likely to 

 prove wholly abortive ; nevertheless a shaft sixty feet deep and 

 at a cost of two thousand dollars has already been dug. I deem 

 it my duty to state, that I could discover in this mine nothing that 

 seemed to contain a trace of silver, or any thing to justify the 

 anticipation of finding it. 



The barytic mineral has become of recent years a substance 

 of considerable demand in commerce, from the rather extensive 

 use now made of it by the manufacturers of white lead, many of 

 whom have been driven by the spirit of competition to mingle it 

 in a finely levigated condition, in a greater or less proportion, 

 with their manufactured article. This adulteration, if such it can 

 be called, would seem not to affect materially the interests of the 

 consumer, as the mineral appears rather to dilute than injure 

 seriously the quality of the white lead, while the reduction in the 

 price will compensate, or nearly so, for the somewhat increased 

 quantity of the paint which it becomes necessary to employ. 



SECTION III. 



Of the Slate of the Kittatinny Valley, Formation HI. 



Geographical Range of the Formation. — Having adopted the 

 ascending order in this description of the rocks of the ancient 



