400. Miscellanies. 



will be seriously promoted by the facilities which this substance will 

 in many ways afford. — Ed. 



6. Geology of the Gold Region of JYorth Carolina. 



(Note from Prof. Mitchell.) 



A letter from Mr. Reinhardt of Lincolnston in this state, is pub- 

 lished in the 16th volume of the Journal, with notes by Prof. Olm- 

 sted appended, and amongst others the following. " The account here 

 given by a gentlemen, not at all interested in the theories of the for- 

 mations, appears to favor the opinion that they are deposits from wa- 

 ter and not merely as Prof. Mitchell has maintained in a late volume of 

 this work, the result of the decomposition of the associated rocks." 

 I could point out some small errors in Mr. Reinhardt's letter. The 

 mines he mentions were not discovered ?.s he says in the summer of 

 1828, but as early at least, as the spring of 1827. They were visi- 

 ted by me in the summer, and described in the fall of that year. But 

 I am willing to allow the account to be strictly accurate and impartial, 

 although I object to Prof. Olmsted's inferences. This gold is found 

 in the beds of small streams where it lies mixed with rounded pebbles 

 of quartz. (See Mr. Reinhardt's letter.) It is exactly under these 

 circumstances that it should be found if my views are correct. Every 

 one knows, that the bed of a stream contains rounded pebbles — the 

 gold that accompanies them in Rutherford, once lay imbedded in the 

 rocks of the neighboring hills, it was liberated from its matrix as these 

 rocks underwent decomposition, and carried down during the preva- 

 lence of violent rains into the bed it now occupies, as is fully stated 

 in my communication, to which Mr. Olmsted refers. When he shall 

 produce a single instance of a collection of rounded pebbles asso- 

 ciated with gold upon a rising ground, remote from a stream, he will 

 have advanced something, adverse to the correctness of the views 

 advocated by me, and favorable to his own. 

 University of North Carolina, Oct. 26th, 1829. 



7. German Collections of Rocks, Minerals, fyc. communicated by 

 Prof. Hitchcock, of Amherst. 



(To the Editor of the Journal of Science, &c.) 



Sir — ^You gave some time ago an account of the terms, on which 

 a Mr. Moldenhauer, of Heidelberg, in Germany, wished to sell, or 



