650 MISSOUEl IRON ORES OF THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE. 



to show that in the case of inferior plants, the spores of ferns for example, 

 it is to the influence of oxygen, that the putting in liberty of their repro- 

 ductive bodies, is due. 



M. Bechamp has devoted attention to the subject of musty eggs. He 

 finds that hen eggs can be enclosed for twelve months in a vessel filled with 

 infusoria, without the animalcules ever being able t© pass through the shell ; 

 but the same is not true respecting the microscopic spores of must. M. 

 Pasteur has shown that the elements of decomposition can exist in the egg 

 itself, in consequence of foreign bodies being present in the ovary of the 

 bird. 



M. Westphal, a German doctor, applies the term agoraphobia — fear of 

 public places, to the nervous malady some persons experience when they 

 quit the foot-path to cross a busy roadway. Benedickt attributes the disease 

 to confused visual sensations; Perroud and du Saulle, to the fear of a void 

 or the dread of space, and that the arm of a passer-by, or following behind a 

 vehicle, relieves. . F. C 



GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 



MISSOURI IRON ORES OF THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE. 

 BY G. C. BROADHEAD, PLEASANT HILL MO. 



The various Iron Ores of Missouri have been extensively treated of in 

 the Geological Reports of the State. Those of central and part of south- 

 east Missouri in the volume of 1872. Others of southeast Missouri in the 

 volume of 1874. But these reports have been mainly confined to ores occur- 

 ring in the rocks older than the carboniferous. The ores heretofore worked 

 in Missouri, belong either to the lower Silurian rocks or the Archaean ; 

 the exception is the opening of a few pits of Eed Hematite in Callaway 

 County, 



Although o\\x Carboniferous ores have been neglected, we nevertheless 

 consider them by no means unimportant. To be sure, many of them are 

 quite impure, but an advantage they possess over the other ores is, that 

 they are easily mined and broken, and that many of them have sufiicient 

 limestone associated with them to render any other fluxes unnecessary. 

 The ores in the older rocks are generally definite deposits, or as foreign 

 developments in either regularly stratified or unstratified rocks. But the 

 carboniferous deposits from regular geological strata, prevailed with the 

 Stratification of the associated rocks. 



