320 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1899. 



U.S.N.M.), Fluvanna and Buckingham, counties. There is also a bed at 

 Alberene, Albemarle County, a little west of Green Mountain. This 

 is the bed so extensively worked by the Albemarle Soapstone Com- 

 pany (Specimen No. 62547, U.S.N.M.) From these points the beds 

 extend in a southwesterly direction through Nelson County, where 

 they are associated with serpentine; thence across the James River 

 above Lynchburg and present an outcrop about 2 miles west of the 

 town on the road leading to Liberty; also one some 2 miles west 

 of New London. Continuing in the same direction the bed is seen 

 at the meadows of Goose Creek, where it has been quarried to 

 some extent. Parallel ranges of soapstone appear near the Pigg 

 River in Franklin County. About 30 miles southwest from Rich- 

 mond, at Chula, in Amelia County, there are outcrops of soapstone 

 said to be of fine quality, and which in former times were quite 

 extensively operated by the Indians. They have been reopened within 

 a few years and the material is now on the market. 



North Carolina contains, in addition to an abundance of the finest 

 grades of talc and steatite as already noted, beds of the compact com- 

 mon soapstone. Deposits in Cherokee and Moore counties furnish 

 especially desirable material for lubricating and other purposes. 

 Murphy, Guilford, Ashe, and Alamance counties (Specimen No. 27664, 

 U.S.N.M.) are also capable of affording good materials, but much of 

 it is inaccessible at present on account of poor railroad facilities 

 (Specimens Nos. 27662, 28118, U.S.N.M.). from Greensboro and Ball 

 Mountain. 



Beds of soapstone are stated to occur in Salina County, Arkansas 

 (Specimen No. 39061, U.S.N.M.), and in Chester, Spartanburg, Union, 

 Pickens,Oconee, Anderson, Abbeville, Kershaw, Fail-field, and Richland 

 counties in South Carolina (Specimens Nos. 37590, 39019, U.S.N.M.). 

 Texas is also stated to have an abundance of material and of good 

 quality on the Hondo and Sandy creeks in Llano County. The Dis- 

 trict of Columbia contains a bed which is, however, probably too small 

 to ever prove of value (Specimen No. 38510, U.S.N.M.). 



Uses. The use to which the material is put varies greatly according 

 to its purity and physical characteristics. The white, fibrous variety 

 of great purity from St. Lawrence County, New York, is used as a 

 filler in paper manufacture, something like 30 per cent of the weight 

 of printing, paper being made up of this material. For the purpose it 

 is run successively through coarse and finer crushers and then through 

 buhrstones, after which it is placed into what is known as an Alsing 

 cylinder, some 6 feet in diameter by about the same length. This 

 cylinder is lined with porcelain brick and filled to one-third its volume 

 with rounded pebbles or quartz, and when in motion revolves at about 

 the rate of 20 revolutions a minute. At the end of some three to four 

 hours the talc is reduced to the form of an impalpable powder. The 

 so-called cyclone crusher has also been used to good advantage in this 



