CHAPTER III. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



In this chapter will be considered those minerals upon which 

 minor industries are based, or which give promise of being 

 capable of being turned to profitable account. 



Gold. 



The gold ores of Alabama occur in the northwestern three- 

 fourths of the region of the Metamorphic and Igneous Rocks, 

 mainly in Cleburne, Clay, Talladega, Coosa, Chilton, Elmore, 

 Tallapoosa, and Randolph counties. The area included is 

 something like 3,500 square miles. The gold deposits are net 

 uniformly distributed through this territory, but occur in sev- 

 eral roughly parallel belts having a general northeast south- 

 west direction. The ore bodies in Alabama as elsewhere, are 

 quartz veins of the bedded or segregation type, occurring usu- 

 ally in feebly crystalline or semi-crystalline schists, often 

 wrongly called talcose schists, though the term talcoid might 

 profitably be used in describing them. Dikes of igneous rocks, 

 granites, and diorites especially, are very commonly observed 

 in the immediate vicinity of the gold veins. The quartz veins 

 are sometimes of lens shape, and of considerable size, sometimes 

 not thicker than the hand, and are apt to be in clusters or 

 groups, the members of which are separated by barren rocks. 



At times the quartz veins are associated with mica schists 

 and other well crystallized rocks and occasionally the slates 

 themselves in the immediate vicinity of the veins are gold 

 bearing. Such slates hold often a great number of small quartz 

 lenses the fillings of small fissures or parting in the slate, due 

 generally to movements caused by the intrusion of igneous 

 recks. In many places the slates with numerous small quartz 

 veins are highly graphitic, and in one locality at least, in Clay 

 county, the gold bearing graphitic slate contains well defined 



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