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considerable distance to the south. The adjacent strata are in 

 most places considerably altered, and in some spots coated with 

 flakes of the green carbonate of copper. 



Recurring to what we have adduced respecting the copper 

 ores of the State, it will be seen that they do not occur under 

 circumstances to make the adventurous miner sanguine in jiur- 

 suing to a costly issue, the indications of this metal which so 

 frequently meet us throughout the red sandstone region. Nume- 

 rous cases exist in other countries, it is true, where rich mines 

 have been wrought in masses of ore that were not genuine 

 veins, nevertheless, when the deposites are like those common in 

 the copper region of New Jersey, mining becomes peculiarly 

 precarious. I have been thus explicit upon this subject, from a 

 persuasion, that one main advantage to be anticipated from a 

 rightly conducted geological survey, is the aid which it is capable 

 of affording to enterprise, by stimulating every branch of whole- 

 some industry, and checking rash and visionary undertakings. It 

 should furnish a faithful statement of what every district possesses, 

 and when necessary of what it does not possess. The one is as 

 needful as the other, if our motive be to give the industry of the 

 community a right direction. It may depress, and it cannot 

 strengthen the spirit of useful enterprise, to permit capital to be 

 misapplied to purposes that, when pursued, lead to loss and dis- 

 appointment. 



When we contemplate the singular degree of uniformity which 

 attends the copper ores of the State, their strict resemblance in 

 point of composition, and the identity of the geological relations 

 under which they are found, we are strongly impressed with the 

 persuasion, that they all owe their production to one epoch, and 

 to one generally-operating cause. Finding them in almost every 

 case adjacent to igneous dikes, but not in contact with them, we 

 are led at once to the inference that they entered the crevices of 

 the somewhat crushed shales at the time of the outpouring of the 

 molten trap, and that hence, like it, their presence at the surface is 

 the consequence of an intense heat. The remarkable manner in 

 which the carbonate of copper is diffused among the minutest 

 fissures of the shale, its great relative abundance, and the well 

 known property of its ready sublimation, together with the curious 

 circumstance that both it and the other ores are rarely in im- 



