Ferruginous Deposits. 61 
large vineyard on the side of an adjacent hill, gave promise of a lus- 
cious harvest, and added one more feature to the exotic look of all 
around. A stratum of white sandstone rock is found in all the adja- 
cent hills, at an elevation of about one hundred feet above the bed 
of the river. It is used for window sills, and various other purpo- 
ses. ‘The lower portion of the bed is stained with red oxide of iron. 
It splits with great facility, and is used for posts in fencing the Zoar 
garden. 
Ferruginous Ehapostlivn Die great ferruginous deposit, which 
crosses the state like a belt, in a S. W. and N. E. direction, is here 
found in its greatest purity and abundance. It first makes its ap- 
pearance about five miles north of this place, and is known to ex- 
tend south for at least thirty miles. It does not hold of this width 
for the whole distance across the state, but can be traced without 
difficulty from near the mouth of the Scioto to Conneaut on the 
Pennsylvania line. It lies here about forty or fifty feet above the 
white sand rock, and near the tops of many of the hills. The ore 
is found in three separate beds, of about six or eight inches in thick- 
ness, and about two feet apart, lying in a matrix or bed of yellow 
ferruginous clay. The bottom stratum of ore rests on a deposit of 
. bluish brown clay, which when dry assumes a foliated structure, and 
is very similar to that found in the bottoms of ponds. These de- 
posits were once continuous, but are now found in broken tabular 
masses, of from ten to one hundred pounds weight. Its structure is 
lamellar, splitting into thin folia, or concentric layers, when ex 
tothe airand sun. The ore is very abundant, and yields from eight 
to nine hundred tons from an acre of surface. In the furnace, it af- 
fords about forty per cent. of iron, or two and a half tons of ore 
yield one ton of pig metal.: It crops out on the abrupt and sloping 
sides of the hills, near their tops, and is yet pursued only so far as it 
can be done by excavating the superincumbent earth. I visited the 
mines on the Zoar lands, where it is found in great purity and abun- 
dance. Directly over the iron ore is a deposit of coal, of two or 
three feet, separated from it, however, by a bed of shale. Below 
the ferruginous deposit is another bed of coal; and near the base of 
the hills, fifty feet below the white sand rock, is a deposit of lime- 
stone, several feet in thickness. I eould not discover any fossil 
shells, or impressions of plants, in the iron ore; but one bed of it, 
however, is columnar in its structure, when burnt, or roasted, much 
resembling one species of fossil madrepore, common to the valley 
