UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PUBLICATIONS 



BULLETIN OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



SCIENTIFIC SECTION 



Vol. I, No. 11, pp. 267-292 July, 1912 



ZIRCONIFEROUS SANDSTONE NEAR ASHLAND, VIRGINIA, 

 WITH A SUMMARY OF THE PROPERTIES, OCCUR- 

 RENCE, AND USES OF ZIRCON IN GENERAL.f 



TH0:MAS L. WATSON AND FRANK L. HESS. 

 PREFATORY NOTE. 



This paper, as its title indicates^ is separable into two parts. Part I 

 describes the discovery of interesting and important deposits of zirconif- 

 erous sandstone in the Coastal Plain province along its western margin 

 west of Ashland, Virginia, and points out the probability of finding other 

 like deposits in similar position in the same province. It records, so far as 

 the ^Titers know, the first reported occurrence of zircon in the Atlantic 

 Coastal Plain, which, apart from its scientific interest, probably indicates 

 an easily accessible commercial source of zircon. Part II assembles in 

 systematic form the leading facts recorded in widely scattered literature 

 concerning the properties, occurrence, and uses of zircon. 



INTRODUCTION. 



In 1910 Mr. August Meyer, of Richmond, Virginia, submitted to one 

 of the writers a specimen of rock obtained about three miles west of Ash- 

 land, which was thought to contain rutile. It was a fine-grained friable 

 dark reddish-brown rock, in which grains of ilmenite or some similar black 

 mineral were distinctly visible. The color of the other grains was appar- 

 ently similar to that of the rutile found 10 to 15 miles farther southwest, 



* Bull. 530-P, U. S. Geol. Survey, 1912. 

 t Read before the Scientific Section, May, 1912. 



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