226 EEPOBT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1899. 



During the period of Turkish rule the exclusive right of emery mining was given to 

 two villages, and this rule has prevailed up to the present time; no Greek Govern- 

 ment having ventured to break down the monopoly. These privileged workmen 

 are about 600 in number, and have the right of working the mineral wherever and 

 in what manner they may think best. The produce is taken over by the Govern- 

 ment official at the rate of about 3 12s. for 50 cwte. The rock is exclusively broken 

 by fire-setting. A piece of ground, about 5 feet broad and the same height, is cleared 

 from loose material, and a pile of brushwood heaped against it and lighted. This 

 burns out in about twenty-four or thirty hours, when water is thrown upon the 

 heated rock to chill it and develop fractures along the secondary divisional planes in 

 the mass of emery, and so facilitate the breaking up and removal of the material. 

 Sometimes a crack is opened out by inserting a dynamite cartridge, but the regular 

 use of explosives is impossible, owing to the hardness of the mineral which can not 

 be bored with steel tools. Only the larger lumps are carried down to the shipping 

 place, the smaller sizes, up to pieces as large as the fist, being left on the ground. 



As most of the suitable places for fire-setting at the surface have been worked out, 

 attempts have been made to follow the deposits underground, but none of these 

 have been carried to any depth, partly on account of the suffocating smoke of the 

 fires, rendering continuous work difficult; but more particularly from the dangerous 

 character of the loose dolomite roof, which is responsible for many fatal accidents 

 from falls annually. These might, of course, be prevented by the judicious use of 

 timber or masonry to support the roof, but this appears to be beyond the skill of 

 the native miners. 



The rapid exhaustion of the forests in the neighbourhood of the mines, owing to 

 the heavy consumption of fuel in fire-setting, has been a cause of anxiety to the 

 Government for some years past, and competent experts have been employed to 

 suggest new methods of working. These have been tolerably unanimous in recom- 

 mending the institution of systematic quarry workings, using diamond boring 

 machines and powerful explosives for winning the mineral, and the construction of 

 wire-rope ways and jetties for improving the methods of conveyance and shipping; 

 but as funds for these improvements, owing to the disastrous condition of the 

 national finances, are not obtainable, the primitive method of working still con- 

 tinues. Meanwhile the competition of the mines in Asia Minor has become so 

 intense that the export of emery from Naxos has almost entirely ceased for a year 

 past. 



According to Jackson, the principal emery deposit at Chester, Mas- 

 sachusetts, in the United States, occurs at South Mountain, in the form 

 of a bed from 4 to 10 feet in width, with a nearly N. 20 E., S. 20 

 W., course, and dipping to the eastward at an angle of 70. The bed 

 widens rapidly as it rises in the mountain, and is in one place, where 

 it is associated with a bed of iron ore (magnetite), IT feet wide, the 

 emery itself being not less than 10 feet in the clear. The highest 

 point of outcrop is 750 feet above the immediate base of the mountain. 

 The bed cuts through both the South and North Mountains, and has 

 been traced in length 4 miles. Frequently large globular masses of 

 the emery are found in a state of great purity, separated from the 

 principal masses of the bed and surrounded by a thin layer of bright 

 green chloritoid and a thicker layer of interwoven laminated crystals 

 of delicate lilac-colored margarite (Specimen No. 63107, U.S.N.M.), 

 sometimes 2 or more inches in thickness. Some of these balls of 

 emery are 3 or more feet in diameter and extremely difficult to break. 



