288 A. W. Chase—Oregon Borate of Lime. 
20 feet above it, of a white substance which he called “ chalk.” 
When it was known that farmer Cresswell had chalk on his 
place, the coopers at the fisheries on the Rogue river and the 
carpenters in the little towns sent for some, and for years after- 
ward it was used in cooperage and to chalk carpenters’ lines. 
Masses of it exposed by winter floods were washed out to sea. 
and cavities of the slate, and pressing down on the layer 
beneath, which was a tough blue steatite with green and white 
veins and of the consistency of clay. Wherever a hollow had 
formed in the blue steatite, the hard borate pressed down into 
it and formed a hemisphere, the upper parts being mixed with 
slate, the lower pure. In the blue steatite and a few inches 
below the slates, the main vein or {flow was found. Here the 
borate was in the form of boulders or rounded masses, com- 
pletely imbedded in the steatite, and in shape not unlike 4 
pumpkin or squash, the sides being corrugated and having 
little depressions in the top surface. These boulders formed a 
continuous line touching each other, and were of uniform size 
in the main flow, weighing about two hundred pounds each, 
although some were much larger, one weighing four hundar 
and fifty. Branching off from the main deposit were side 
flows, where the boulders ran from twenty pounds down to 
small pellets the size of a pea, and even smaller. : 
ese masses were all perfectly pure and each complete 2 
itself. When broken apart the fracture exhibits no luster 
