CLINTON COUNTY. 



293 



c. Blue vein; 6, 6, black, and c, grey veins; d, d, dykes; r, intervening rock. 

 One of the dykes is ten feel wide, and its course is about N. 60° E. 



Another, called Indian vein, was very early discovered on the Arnold hill, about fifty rods 

 west of the veins just described. It pursues an easterly course, and if continued, would inter- 

 sect the others some distance north of the place where they are now worked. The trials 

 which have been made with this ore are unfavorable, and hence it has never been extensively 

 opened. The most interesting fact is its oblique course and direction, being in this respect 

 out of the usual range. 



Reasons for the easy 7-eduction of the ore of the Arnold vein. 



The certainty of the process employed for the reduction of the ore of the Arnold vein, is 

 a fact well established by long experience. Some cause connected with the nature of the 

 ore, its formation, or its chemical constitution, must influence or bring about this result. The 

 decision of this inquiry will undoubtedly be important, as it would throw light on the cause 

 of failure in working other ores, and be the means of removing the difficulties sometimes en- 

 countered in their reduction. Analysis shows that what is usually called magnetic oxide, is 

 a mixture of two species or kinds of ore, or iron in two states of oxidation : in one, the iron 

 is combined with one atom of oxygen ; and in the other, it is combined with two. This 

 difference makes, with all mineralogists and chemists, two distinct species or kinds of matter. 

 Chemical analysis proves also that the ore of different veins is not composed, with any degree 

 of uniformity, of these two kinds of matter ; but chemical analysis, while it proves both the 

 mixture and the different amount of either in a given case, can never show us whether crys- 

 tals of one of these bodies are distinct and separate from those of the other in the same mass : 

 that is, if the usual method only is employed, if for example one hundred grains of the purest 

 part of the vein is selected, pulverized, and then the full process of analysis is gone through 

 with, such an amount of protoxide in the one hundred grains will be obtained ; but it Would 

 not appear whether the particles of the protoxide and peroxide existed in small but distinct 

 masses, or were uniformly blended together. Though this point cannot be determined by 

 analysis, still it may be by the magnet, the protoxide alone being acted upon or attracted by 

 it. Now experience has amply proved, that where the ore is composed of the two oxides. 



