METALS AND THEIR ORES. 65 



wide the vein may iiave become in depth, and however rich the ore, the ratio of ore to 

 gangue must have been too small. 



Galena has also been exploited during recent years at a point a few miles farther 

 west on Mt. Hayes. The results Avere unsatisfactory, and the workings unextensive, 

 compared Vv-ith those just described. 



Silverdalc Mine. In the south part of I'iltsfield, on the Suncook river and tlie 

 Suncook Valley Railroad, is the hamlet known upon the maps as " Webster's Mills," 

 called more recently upon the neighboring guide-boards, "Silverdalc." The exploita- 

 tion for silver-lead has been on the east side of the river, about one fourth of a mile 

 north of the bridge, upon the first bench above the immediate river-bottom. The 

 southernmost shaft is that at which the most work has been done, and from which 

 the specimens in the state cabinet were taken. A few feet north of this is an untim- 

 bered cut, ten feet deep, which simply serves, being dry, to show the vein for that 

 slight depth. Several rods further north is a third opening, known as the " Couch 

 shaft," apparently off the vein. The two shafts are full of water; but a resident of 

 Silverdale, familiar with, the workings, states that the first is about 35 and the second 

 about 30 feet deep. The vein is a " bedded" one, and, along with the synchronous 

 country rock, has a general strike N. 34° E., and a dip 85° N. 56° W. It averages 

 two feet wide, the gangue of quartz carrying the ore in perpendicular seams running 

 parallel to the vein walls. The foot-wall on the east is of white gneiss, reticulated 

 with little quartz veins, and its plane of demarcation from the vein is very definitely 

 marked. The hanging-wall is indistinctly defined, the vein-rock grading into a quartz 

 characterized by greenish-yellow and brown patches of softer mineral, sometimes 

 nodular, and sometimes angular in outline. Blende runs through the vein in sheets 

 one half inch thick persistently, occasionally widening into bulges one half foot thick, 

 blotched with large-crystalled galenite. On the border of the vein the rock carries 

 considerable pyrites in minute sprinkled crystals, and occasionally chalcopyrite in 

 small blotches. 



A furnace has been erected at the bridge for smelting the galenite under a new 

 patent, said to contain original and valuable features. The furnace-house being 

 locked and the key temporarily out of town the day the locality was examined, no 

 description of it can be given. An assay of the Silverdale ore gave 1.6 ounces of 

 silver to the ton. 



Loudon. In the central part of the township of Loudon galena has been exploited 

 at the locality called ''BusweH's Mine." The opening is on elevated land, the 

 aneroid showing a height of 300 feet above Pittsfield station on the Suncook Valley 

 Railroad. The shaft was not only full of water, but planked over at the time the spot 

 was visited, so that little idea could be formed of the mine. There is plainly no vein, 

 the opening having been made in what is apparently the rock of the country, though 

 it might, on more extended examination, prove to be an exceedingly wide trappean 

 dyke. This rock has a general strike N. 40° E. and dip 80° N. W. It is porphyritic, 

 the include!^ crystals, most commonly one half inch long and one sixteenth wide, 

 VOL. V. Q 



