338 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. XXII. No. 568 



Parole della Verita," in its various forms ; on a pecu- 

 liarity of the Book of Tobit ; on the Novella of Cisco da 

 Ferrara ; on the Apologue of Menenius Agrippa, etc. All 

 of these show extensive reading and sound critical judg- 

 ment. 



FALL MEETING OF THE ALABAMA INDUSTRIAL 

 AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 



In December, 1890, this society was organized "for the 

 promotion of the scientific examination and discussion of 

 various questions of interest to the material progress of 

 the state." The last meeting of this society was held in 

 Birmingham on Nov. 24, when several papers of consider- 

 able interest were presented. 



Mr. Murray, of the Linn Iron Works, described an im- 

 provement made by him in boilers. This improvement 

 consists in the use of a double decked boiler with a mud 

 drum below, and a further improvement was a modifica- 

 tion of the Speerman-Kennedy gas burner. Mr. A. E. 

 Barton, Superintendent of the Easley Furnaces, read a 

 paper ''On the Grading of Southern Pig-iron," in which 

 he discussed the change from the old method of fifteen 

 grades to the present one of eleven grades. He also 

 emphasized the necessitj' of frequent analj'ses of the 

 furnace products as an aid to the pi-oper grading. 



Mr. Erskine Ramsay, Mining Engineer at the Pratt 

 Mines, and President of the Society, read a paper -On 

 the Use of Coke Oven Gases and Heat in the Generation 

 of Steam." The system in use at the Pratt Mines, which 

 has been very carefully worked out by Mr. Ramsay, has 

 resulted in considerable economy. The coke ovens are 

 provided with a gas flue running the entire length of the 

 battery through which the gases are delivered under the 

 boilers. Mr, Ramsey showed that the heat thus utilized 

 was merely the waste heat of the coke ovens, and that 

 none of it was due to the combustion of the gases them- 

 selves. Attempts to utilize the heat of combustion were 

 not successful. 



Dr. William B. Phillips, consulting chemist of the Ten- 

 nessee Coal, Iron and Railway Company, read a paper on 

 the '-Improvement of the Iron Ores of the Birmingham 

 District," in which he described certain processes which 

 he has for some time been investigating, by which it will 

 be possible to free the red ores of the Clinton or Red 

 Mountain formation from the greater part of the silica, 

 as well as from most of the pihosphorus. The freeing of 

 the iron from the silica is effected by means of an electro- 

 magnet, the ores haviug been previously magnetized by 

 heating them in an atmosphere of combustible gas. 

 Operating upon 3,000 pounds at a time, the crude ore, 

 which contained 40 per cent of iron and 29 per cent of 

 silica, was so improved as to yield 57 per cent of iron and 

 only 10 per cent of silica. In some cases even better re- 

 sults than this have been obtained. The success of these 

 exjjeriments has induced the company to make a test on 

 a large scale in one of their furnaces in Bessemer, and if 

 successful there also (and of this there seems to be no 

 reasonable ground for doubt), a vast amount of ore will 

 at once become available, which is now thrown aside be- 

 cause carrying from 2.5 per cent to 35 per cent of silica. 



Mr. H. F. Wilson, Jr., described some work of his in 

 tracing the great seams of ore along the Red Mountain 

 on both sides of Grace's Gap, illustrating his remarks by 

 some handsome drawings and sections. This paper was 

 a valuable suisplement to that of Dr. Phillips. 



The financial depression of the last year or two has left 

 its impress upon the society, but at this last meeting nine 

 new members were elected, and a marked increase of 

 interest was shown in the number of papers presented 

 and in the discussions which followed. 



ALABAMA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



The field work of the geological survey during the past 

 season has been in the gold region of Coosa, Talladega, 

 Tallapoosa, Cleburne, Randolph and Clay Counties. Be- 

 fore the discovery of gold in California a great amount 

 chiefly of placer work was done in Alabama, and many 

 thousands of dollars' worth of gold raised. This work 

 was almost suspended when the new fields of California 

 were brought to notice, for the gold miners of Georgia 

 and Alabama fiocked to the new country to try their for- 

 tunes. Since 1849, the mining of gold in Alabama has 

 been somewhat desultory, though never entii-ely aban- 

 doned. During the past five years there has been a 

 renewal of interest in the industry, and many new enter- 

 prises have been set on foot. Unfortunately, however, 

 some of these were badly managed and have come to 

 grief, and the impression has gone abroad that the 

 mining of gold in Alabama will not pay. 



Certainly, it will not pay in the manner in which the 

 work has been carried on at many places, for most of the 

 plants are arranged solely for the winning of free gold 

 and are practically useless after the mining has gone 

 down to the drainage level, and the ore is in its original 

 condition of a sulphui'et. Thus most of the mills have 

 ceased work after the free milling surface ore has been 

 exhausted. A few years ago Dr. William B. Phillips 

 undertook for the Alabama Survey an examination of the 

 gold region of the state, but this work was interrupted 

 by unavoidable circumstances after he had spent only a 

 few weeks in the field. His report, in Bulletin No. 3 of 

 the Alabama Survey documents, showed conclusively that 

 with proper methods, such as are in use at the Hailes 

 mine in South Carolina and elsewhere and adapted to the 

 successful working of sulphurets, the mining of gold 

 could be made profitable in many places within the bor- 

 ders of this state. The examinations of the last season 

 have only served to confirm this opinion of Dr. Phillips 

 and to bring to light a number of new localities where 

 the mining of gold with proper methods of extraction may 

 surely be made profitable The gold does not seem to be 

 distributed over the whole of our crystalline schists, but 

 it is mainly confined to those belts of partially crystalline, 

 argillaceous slates which have been named the Talladega 

 formation by the Geological Survey A part of these 

 slates are equivalent to the Ocoee group of Dr. Safford 

 in Tennessee. This is the belt which lies furthest to- 

 wards the northwest, making the northwest border of the 

 crystalline schists, but there are two other well defined 

 belts of almost exactly identical rocks crossing our crys- 

 talline area further to the southeast, and these belts also 

 are rich in gold-bearing quartz veins In one locality 

 only, of those examined, the gold is found in a fully crys- 

 talline mica schist. 



In most instances the gold is associated with veins of 

 quartz which appear to be interbedded with the slates 

 themselves, and in such cases the veins are usually not 

 solid sheets of quartz but strings of lenticular masses of 

 quartz wrapped in the slates, and occupying a width or 

 thickness of strata of twenty or thirty feet. In other in- 

 stances the quartz veins cut across the strata and are 

 then only a few inches in thickness but very rich in gold. 

 In the westernmost belt of these gold bearing rocks, the 

 quartz vein is quite thin, only a few inches, but on the 

 other hand of exceptional richness. For several years 

 j^ast the attention of capitalists has been directed to the 

 gold fields of this and adjoining states, and it appears 

 certain that with ordinary care and good judgment in the 

 management the mining of gold will soon be numbered 

 among the paying industries of Alabama. 



