100 Remarks on the Gold Mines of Virginia. 
Since my observations were made, I have seen, for the first time, 
the remarks of Professor Rogers on this point; he regards these as 
true veins of injection ; his observations having been more extensive 
than mine, it is certainly possible I may be in an error; I can speak 
only from what I have seen. The auriferous or gold-bearing quartz 
of the gold region of Virginia (and, as far as I am informed, of the 
States farther south) forms, not strictly veins, but rather beds or lay- 
ers—in general not interfering with, but conforming to, the regular 
structure of the slaty rocks of the country, and like them, desea 
ing to an unknown and probably an unfathomable depth. There is 
therefore no probability that the quartz will ever be worked out to 
the bottom or exhausted, or that it will often be found heaved or 
displaced by fractures and dislocations, usually called faults, except 
so far as this accident may have befallen the rocks themselves. ‘This 
structure makes the working of these mines very simple; the miner 
follows, unerringly, the bed or layer of quartz; it is rarely diminished 
to strings or disappears, and when that is the fact, it often reappears 
at no great distance, in an enlarged size. ‘The quartz is, therefore, 
as regular a part of the structure of the country as the slaty rocks 
themselves, and when it is auriferous, (as is not unfrequently the fact 
in the gold region,) the gold is disseminated through it in spangles, 
flakes and points, sometimes visible on breakigy the quartz, but most 
usually entirely invisible, even with a powerful magnifying glass. 
In far the greater number of cases, the eye detects nothing but 
quartz, or sometimes metallic sulphurets of iron, zinc or lead; and 
the observer, unless previously instructed in the case, would never 
suspect the presence of gold, either distinct, or in the metallie sul- 
pburets. The gold, being generally disseminated in the quartz of 
this gold region, it is obvious that it must have been laid by in its 
stony bed, at the same time that the quartz and the slaty rocks in 
which it is contained were deposited. This fact increases the proba- 
bility that the gold will not be exhausted ; no one can indeed predict 
with certainty, to what depth it descends or in what proportion it 
exists below ; but no reason can be assigned, why it should cease or 
be found in less abundance than near the surface. The same causes 
would appear to have been in operation—at the same geological 
epoch, from the Gulf of Mexico, through the gold region, quite to 
Maryland—perhaps quite to Lower Canada, and possibly still far- 
ther, as some facts would appear to indicate. Gold has been found 
in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Lower Canada, and, as is reported, 
in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, 
