440 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



would repay us for the expense. There is an evidence of the 

 fallaciousness of the theory in a vein found in North Carolina. 

 It was discovered by a hammock of red hematite upon the sur- 

 face. The centre of the vein was gold ; around that was copper, 

 blended in with the copper and the gold was the sulphuret of 

 iron, which is alAvays found with gold. Sulphuret of gold is pro- 

 bably the original form of the ore, and in decomposition the 

 sulphur leaves the gold and combines with the iron, leaving the 

 pure native gold in flakes. The miners -worked the gold all out; 

 kept on deeper and worked the copper all out ; persevered and 

 etill deeper they came to the end of the iron. They had reached 

 the end of the whole formcition. In Missouri there is a horizontal 

 layer of limestone bearing lead ; next below it is a layer of sand- 

 stone containing no lead ; then comes a second layer of limestone 

 containing lead ; a second layer of sandstone without lead, and 

 below that the primitive rock without lead. The Plutonian 

 theory would be that the lead in that limestone came up through 

 the sandstone, although there is no trace of it there. Again, in 

 Missouri the refuse rejected by the old Spanish miners has been 

 worked over the third time, and inside of the handles of the old 

 knives, and in the old picks left there, has been found new lead. 

 There is also in England the shaft of an old mine which had 

 extended under the ocean and been abandoned, and finally filled 

 up with sand from the ocean ; and now the copper may be found 

 extending right across that filled up shaft. In one of the iron 

 mines of Sweden, exhausted and abandoned two or three hundred 

 years ago, woodwork has been found coated with iron, and one of 

 the ancient miners was found with his bones converted into iron. 

 The theory of mines has undergone a great transformation, for it 

 has been found by experience that in a large majority of cases 

 the attempt to work to a great depth has proved an utter failure. 



Mr. Nash cited instances of the finding of nuggets of gold which 

 geemed to have been formed from particles washed from aurifurous 

 quartz. 



Mr. Roosevelt stated that 10 deg. south of the Equator, on the 

 Pacific coast, is a copper mine; and that seventy yards within 

 that mine there was blasted out a human skull with three thou- 

 sand feet of:copper ore about it. 



Subject for discussion. — Mr. Tillman suggested "Stevens' 

 Floating Steam Battery." 



