144 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



magnetite-bearing rock. The thickness of the zone as shown in 

 the workings ranges up to an extreme of 12 or 14 feet in width. 

 The bands of rich ore vary from mere films to 2 or 3 feet. The 

 ore body can be traced along the strike by outcrop and dip-needle 

 readings for fully a mile. 



A second smaller body occurs about a mile south of the first. It 

 has been opened by a short adit at one point. The strike is paral- 

 lel with the main deposit, but the dip is toward the north at a low 

 angle, while the latter has a high dip southward. An area of 

 granitic gneiss intervenes between the two deposits. 



The wall rock at both localities is gneissoid syenite. Of the ore 

 association, Cushing 1 has given the following account: 



Inclosing the ore and grading into it, is a very basic gneiss com- 

 posed of hornblende, magnetite, augite, feldspar and quartz, the 

 black minerals constituting 75 per cent of the rock. Hornblende is 

 much the most abundant of these. About equal amounts of quartz 

 and feldspar are present, the feldspar being part oligoclase and part 

 orthoclase. 



So far as can be judged from specimens obtained from the 

 dumps, this gneiss grades rapidly into a more feldspathic horn- 

 blende gneiss, and the latter into syenite gneiss, at first basic but 

 rapidly becoming more acid. 



The gradation between ore and country rock is very noticeable; 

 no well defined walls exist, but there is a shading off by impercep- 

 tible stages from one to the other. 



The workings. The mining developments which have been car- 

 ried on during the last two or three years by the Salisbury Steel 

 & Iron Co. have been concentrated on the western portion of the 

 deposit in proximity to the old pits. A vertical shaft has been sunk 

 a short distance north of the main pit. It has been carried down 

 about 200 feet. At a depth of 100 feet a drift has been extended 

 easterly along the body, while a second level with drifts to the east 

 and west has been opened at 150 feet. The workings are about 

 14 feet wide near the shaft on the second level, diminishing to 3 

 or 4 feet at either end. 



Some prospecting has been done at points east of the shaft, the 

 farthest being about 4000 feet away. The deposit appears to be 

 much thinner in this part. 



Character of the ore. The ore consists of granular and massive 

 magnetite, the former being a mixture of magnetite and the minerals 

 of the wall rock and the latter a nearly pure magnetite of very dense 



I Op. cit. p. 91. 



