20§ Miscellanies 



tide, are contained in a letter to the senior editor from Lt. James T. 

 Gerry, of the navy, dated United States ship Warren, Pensacola, Sept. 

 14, 1840. 



The soil in the vicinity, as well as for half a league in the interior, 

 is ferruginous, and large detached pieces of good iron ore are fre- 

 quently found. The most remarkable character of the specimens is, 

 that they form strata of regular horizontal tubes, proceeding from a 

 bank of red sand into the river, and becoming harder in the water and 

 in the weather. In every instance they were hollow, but when the spe- 

 cimens were taken from the vicinity of the bank, the cavity was filled 

 with sand. 



Many tubes that appeared well formed in the bank, with the exterior 

 covering apparently perfect, would not bear removal, but crumbled 

 with the pressure of the hand. The specimens taken from the river, 

 three or four feet under water, were the most compact, and always 

 exhibited the horizontal position like those above tide water. 



The beach is composed of sand, with the addition of the river de- 

 posit of soft mud ; the " Rocky Point" being the only exception in the 

 neighborhood, which extends about eighty yards into the river. 



After pulverizing any of the hardest masses of these ferruginous 

 concretions, the resulting substance was, in every particular, like the 

 o-reat mass in the bank, except that it contained more iron. Nothing 

 like petrifaction could be discovered in these concretions or in any body 

 in the vicinity. Thus far Lt. Gerry. 



His last remark precludes the supposition that these concretions were 

 formed around vegetable stems which have since decayed and been re- 

 moved ; and indeed there is not the smallest appearance of any foreign 

 body in these remarkable tubes. They are of various dimensions, from 

 the size of a goose quill to that of a finger, and even of a human arm ; 

 we actually slipped one of them upon the fore arm to the elbow like a 

 coat sleeve. Several tubes of different sizes sometimes occur in the 

 same mass — some of them are straight and you can look through them ; 

 others are tortuous and irregular in size as well as form ; sometimes 

 fiat, and again collapsing into a continuous mass without a cavity. In 

 some of them there is recorded on the exterior the perfect ripple mark, 

 waving in graceful curves as the waters flowed with ceaseless attrition 

 over their surfaces. 



Some of the tubes are veiy firm, like a strongly coherent sandstone 

 fully soaked with oxide of iron ; but in all, the magnifier, if not the 

 naked eye, detects the grains of sand, invested with or penetrated by 

 iron. 



The iron is in the condition of peroxide, and it is blended with the 

 quartzose sand in every proportion, some of the sand and especially 

 that in the tubes being almost white. 



