12 MINERAL, RESOURCES OF ALABAMA. 



Experiments carried out by Dr. Wm. B. Phillips for the 

 Tennessee Company, have fully demonstrated the practica- 

 bility of reducing the relative proportion of silica by magnetic 

 concentration, 10 that the entire thickness of this great seam 

 will one day be utilized, and the same may be said of the silic- 

 eous ores of other parts of the state. 



The other seams of the Red Mountain Ore, viz., the Iron- 

 dale Seam below the Big Seam, and the Ida seam above it, 

 have been worked at places along the East Red Mountain 

 from opposite Birmingham towards the northeast; the ore is 

 softer than that of the Big Seam, carrying sometimes over 50 

 per cent, of metallic iron. The Ida seam, where worked, yields 

 a compact ore five or six feet thick, with 30 to 35 per cent, of 

 metallic iron. 



In most of the smaller mines the mine cars ar? hauled to the 

 surface; the miners are paid by the car load (abr.ut two tops), 

 the tracks being kept up by the company. 



Without any reference to the actual hardness of the ore, 

 the leached red ore containing very little lime is called soft 

 ore, and the unleached or limy ore, hard ore. 



The soft ore is usually hard enough to necessitate blasting 

 and crushing. As a rule it extends down on the dip a dis- 

 tance of 150 to 200 feet from the outcrop, though on the one 

 hand it sometimes extends 300 feet, and on the other hand, 

 in places the hard ore sets in at the outcrop ; the amount and 

 depth of the soft ore apparently being more or less determined 

 by the cover. The transition from: the one variety to the other 

 is usually abrupt, but the line of contact is irregular, the soft 

 ore extending in points down\ into the hard ore. Moreove.. 

 the soft ore often includes boulders and pockets of the hard 

 ore, and occasionally "horses" of ferruginous sandstone. Be h 

 ores are quite contsant in composition away from the line of 

 contact. 



The soft ore is limited in quantity but this does not signify 

 much, is it is being less and less used in the furnaces. It is 

 usually a mass of smooth, rounded, and flattened grains of 

 quartz of the size of bird shot and smaller, coated with hema- 

 tite and cemented together by the same material. Its averse 

 composition as shown by stock house analyses extended over 

 many vears, is about as follows: Silica or insoluble matter 

 27 per cent; Metallic iron 46 per cent; Water 7 per cent; 

 Phosphorus 0.30 per cent, to 0.40 per cent, and a little lime. 



