ticle, are contained in a letter to the senior editor from Lt. James T. 
Gerry, of the navy, dated United States ship Warren, Pensacola, Sept: 
14, 1840. 
‘The all. in the vicinity, as well as for half a league in the ition; 
is ferruginous, and large detached pieces of good iron ore are fre- 
quently found. The most remarkable character of the specimens is, 
that they form strata of regular horizontal tubes, proceeding from a 
bank of red sand into the river, and becoming harder in the water and 
in the weather. In every instance they were hollow, but when the spe- 
cimens were taken from the visit of the bank, the cavity was filled 
with sand. 
Many tubes that sppelres well Reptbthc in the bank, with the exterior 
covering apparently perfect, would not bear removal, but crumbled 
with the pressure of the hand. The specimens taken from the river, 
three or four feet under water, were the most compact, and always 
exhibited the horizontal position like those above tide water. 
The beach is composed of sand, with the addition of the river de- 
posit of soft mud ; the ‘‘ Rocky Point” being the only exception in the 
neighborhood, which extends about eighty yards into the river. 
After pulverizing any of the hardest masses of these ferruginous 
concretions, the resulting substance was, in every particular, like the 
great mass in the bank, except that it contained more iron. Nothing 
like petrifaction could be discovered in these concretions or in any body 
in the vicinity. Thus far Lt. Gerry 
His last remark precludes the supposition that these concretions were 
formed around vegetable stems which have since decayed and been re- 
moved ; and indeed there is not the smallest appearance of any foreign 
body: in these remarkable tubes. They are of various dimensions, from 
the size of a goose quill to that of a finger, and even of a human arm; 
we actually slipped one of them upon the fore arm to the elbow. like a 
coat sleeve. Several tubes of different sizes sometimes occur. in ‘the 
same mass—some of them are straight and you can look through them ; 
others are tortuous and irregular in size as well as form; sometimes 
flat, and again collapsing into a continuous mass without a cavity. In 
some of them there is recorded on the exterior the perfect ripple mark, 
waving in graceful curves as the waters flowed with ceaseless attrition 
wet their surfaces. 
_ Some of the tubes are very firm, like a strongly coherent sandstone 
fully. soaked with oxide of iron; but in all, the magnifier, if not the 
naked eye, detects the grains of sand, invested with or penetrated by 
iron. 
The iron is in the condition of peroxide, and it is blended with the 
quartzose sand in every proportion, some of the sand and especially 
that in the tubes being almost white. 
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