Ferruginous Deposits. 131 



The soil is light colored and sandy. The forest trees are chiefly 

 oak and yellow pine on the hills, the pine being confined to the tops 

 of the highest hills. In the ravines and narrow bottoms, between 

 the ridges, poplar, hickory, and sugar trees are found. On Genet's 

 creek, eighteen miles above the mouth of the Scioto, and two miles 

 from the Ohio river, is " the Junior furnace," nearly in the center of 

 the main iron deposits. At this spot, and for many miles above and 

 below it, there are three distinct deposits of ore, of different varie- 

 ties, and producing different qualities of iron. The first or lowest 

 bed, reposes on a sandstone rock, about fifty feet above the^rea^ lime- 

 stone rock, which underlies all this region. It is about eighteen 

 inches in thickness, and intermixed with a good deal of sand. It 

 varies considerably in quality and in thickness at different points. 

 It has evidently been deposited from, or in water, containing fossil 

 shells ; but is the poorest of all the ores. The second bed is about 

 one hundred and fifty feet higher in the hill, and is deposited in, or 

 has a matrix of blueish colored clay, in kidney shaped masses. 

 These are composed of concentric layers, that easily separate under 

 the process of roasting. This bed is from five, to twenty inches 

 thick, and affords, in the common way, about forty per cent of very 

 pure, highly carbonated iron, of the best quality for castings. The 

 articles formed from the pigs made at the Franklin furnace, have 

 the color and lustre of black lead. The specific gravity of this ore 

 is 3.02. The third bed is about ninety feet above the second, re- 

 posing on a dark carbonaceous limestone rock. It is of the quality 

 called " brown, compact, oxide of iron," and varies in thickness, 

 from a few inches to five feet. When well managed it affords about 

 fifty per cent of iron, of a quality very suitable for bar, or hammered 

 iron, possessing great tenacity and flexibility. This bed is called 

 by the miners "block ore," from its breaking into cubic pieces; the 

 bed being full of seams and cracks, resembling, when first uncovered, 

 a pavement of tiles and bricks. Where the deposit is thick, it 

 abounds in vertical, oblong cavities of several inches in length, in 

 the center of which is a stalactitic ore, looking as if it had been 

 melted, and while running dov/n cooled into the shape of an icicle. 

 At the bottom of the cavity is a depression, answering or conform- 

 ing to the rounded extremity of the stalactite. 



Mr. Hitchcock, in his geology of Massachusetts, takes notice of 

 an iron ore having the same structure. At the first view we are led 

 to conclude it to be the effect of heat, but every appearance of the 



