Miscellanies i 383 



became sick and perished, and on examination the nest was found to 

 be crowded with acari of large size. 



Poultry which run about in stony or paved yards, wear away the 

 points of their claws by friction and digging, which renders them un- 

 fit to penetrate their coating of feathers ; they are, therefore, more 

 covered with vermin, and in consequence more sickly than fowls 

 from the country. — Jovr. of Roy. Inst. Feb. 1831. 



NOTICES AND COMMUNICATIONS. 



1. Copper Ore of Strafford, Vt. &fc., extracted from a letter to 

 Mr. C. U. Shepard, from Mr. Richardson of Franconia, N. H. Sept. 

 26, 1831. 



I have not any thing new to write respecting my works — the mag- 

 netic machine* continues to answer a valuable purpose. Mr. Brown- 

 ing has recently put one of his machines in operation, in Peru, which 

 brings into use an ore bed that was before worthless. I am making 

 about the_same quantity of iron, that I have been, say two tons per 

 week — and also at the lower works, every thing goes on as it did 

 when you was here. 



The copper mine at Strafford, is owned by the Vermont Mineral 

 Company, to which company the copperas works also belong. The 

 copper is in the same hill with the copperas ore, called Mount Pros- 

 pect or Copperas hill. They have driven a drift into the hill hori- 

 zontally, fo the distance of three hundred and thirteen feet, with a 

 very slight inclination, just sufficient to admit the running off of the 

 water, and a fathom in height and width — at '.be termination of this 

 distance is excavated a large chamber, say forty feet in diameter by 

 fifteen feet in height, and from this chamber proceed six other drifts 

 of twelve, eighteen, twenty five, thirty, fifty and sixty feet in length. 

 The copper ore is promiscuously connected with copperas ore, and 

 the vein of copperas ore in which copper is found, is at seventy feet 

 in width ; from the chamber above alluded to, there is a perpendic- 

 ular air shaft one hundred feet in height to the surface of the hill — 

 there are twelve miners at work, all of whom blast by the contract, so 

 much a cubic fathom — the ore after it is blasted is taken out of the 

 mine in a car working on a rail road laid the whole distance of the 

 main drift, and when arriving at the mouth of the mine, the copper 



" See Vol. xvm, p. 28J), of this Journal. 



