384 Miscellanies. 



and would appear to indicate that we are using (and certainly deri- 

 ving great benefit from the use of) a certain description of limestoncj 

 but which is not gypsum. If this is a fact, it goes to confirm the 

 idea, that limestone, in a pulverized state, is equally fertilizing as 

 gypsum. 



The subject is important to the farming interest, and certainly 

 merits further investigation. It would not be difficult to erect ma- 

 chinery which would crush the hardest hmestone and prepare it for 

 grinding in a common plaster mill. 



Mr. Moore's limestone formation is on a hill about five miles 

 north east of this village. In digging his well, the first three feet 

 was common soil ; the next three feet shelly, thin limestone, (this 

 is a common covering of beds of gypsum) ; from six feet from the 

 top to twenty feet, which is as far as he has dug, it has the appear- 

 ance at a short distance of blue clay ; it is brittle, and easily dug 

 up with a pick, and consists of fossils in vast abundance, which 

 would seem to have been interspersed originally with blue earth, 

 which became indurated, and finally hmestone. Among the speci- 

 mens is a large piece of the blue clay limestone. Almost precisely 

 similar formations have been found on several farms. I have never 

 seen any thing similar to it, but am not enough of a geologist to de- 

 scribe it more minutely — one thing is certain, which seems to com- 

 prise the main chance, it is equal to the best plaster in its fertilizing 

 qualities. 



Geneseo, June 1, 1836. 



6. A few Observations on the Reply of Professor Shepard, 

 which was published in this Journal, Vol. xxvii, No. ii. Jan- 

 uary, 1835. — Our College of Mines did not receive number 2, of 

 the American Journal until the first of this month, and I could 

 not, of course, make an answer earlier. — I omitted, indeed, giv- 

 ing the reader a fair opportunity of judging of the matter through 

 the aid of an example, in order to leave the choice to Profes- 

 sor Shepard, and he could not choose a worse one ; I know not 

 any rutile which is fine granular or impalpable : even Mobs only 

 says that it is granular of various sizes. Now any small fragment 

 whatever breaks under the blow of a hammer into square prisms, as 

 I have elsewhere observed. Moreover, Breithaupt (a good au- 

 thority, in my opinion) says in the fourth volume of his German 

 manual of Mineralogy, 255th page, that its fragments not very 



