C. E. Be Ranee — Mineral Veins in the North-ioest Country. 305 



South of tlie Sulphur Vein the Sir John's and Clargill Head Old 

 Veins have yielded a good deal of lead in the Hiddenhole Mine ; 

 and east of Slack's Eigg, the former vein was worked in the bottom 

 of the Scar Limestone, which, though saturated with water and much 

 iron-stained, contains no iron-ore, which in poor lodes takes the place 

 of the Cornish Gossans, and in those portions of the lead and copper 

 lodes that are almost wholly improductive of these metals, fills the 

 whole fissure of the lode of 6, 8, and even 10 feet in width, the 

 limonite consisting of laminated stripes of different colours, the 

 laminee running in waving curves parallel to the sides of the lodes. 



North of the Sulphur Vein, Sir John's Vein, worked at Stow 

 Cragg, Lee House, and other Mines, has yielded considerable quan- 

 tities of lead from the limestones, and copper from the sandstones, 

 and in a portion of the lode the lead and copper are blended 

 together. The back of the lode, both in the copper and lead portion, 

 consists of hydrated per-oxide of iron, with veins of carbonate of 

 lime. On the other side of the Sulphur Vein, the Sir John's and 

 other veins parallel to it, especially High Tyne Green, Dosey, and 

 Ladies Veins, are not very richly productive of lead or copper along a 

 belt of country running through Bel Beaver to Tees, in a south-easterly 

 direction, the whole lode being entirely made up of the hydrated 

 per-oxide of iron, to the exclusion of all foreign material. The various 

 levels driven into the hill-side, on the east side of the South Tyne and 

 the col in which it takes its source, up to the river Tees, after passing 

 through the lead belt, have ciit into higher rocks productive only of 

 iron. At the time these levels were driven iron-ore of this descrip- 

 tion was of little value, and heaps of it have been left around, the 

 numbers of small shafts sunk in the course of the lodes, to extract 

 the small portion of lead occurring here and there in the centre of 

 the iron gangue. 



The iron ore in these refuse heaps is generally light and honey- 

 combed, with interstices in every direction ; these I found, by analyses 

 kindly communicated to me by Lieut. -Colonel A. M. Byng, to be due 

 to the wasting away of the alumina and carbonate of lime, through 

 the wash of rain and atmospheric action during the last 60 or 70 

 years. The amount of metallic iron in specimens I procured from 

 the lodes at a considerable depth at the forebreast of the old lead 

 levels both at Tyne Green and under the summit of Cross Fell, only 

 averaging 33 per cent., while some of the ore from the heaps of 

 debris averaged 44 per cent, of metallic iron, the iron ore being 8 feet 

 in width, the walls containing a very large quantity of fiuor : east- 

 ward on the Derwentwater estates of Greenwich Hospital, the iron is 

 not present in this lode. 



Traced eastward the iron in Sir John's and Tyne Green veins 

 becomes rather siliceous, but parallel lodes in the adjacent manor of 

 the Duke of Cleveland yield good brown per-oxide of iron, which is 

 being accumulated in great heaps against the day when Middleton 

 and Alston shall be joined by a railway. 



A small W.N.W. anticlinal passes south of Bel Beaver, at John's 

 Bum, west of Crookburn Bridge, on the Middleton road ; the water 



VOL. X. — NO. cix. 20 



