METALS AND THEIR ORES. 65 
wide the vein may have become in depth, and however rich the ore, the ratio of ore to 
gangue must have been too small. 
Galena has also been exploited during recent years at a point a few miles farther 
west on Mt. Hayes. The results were unsatisfactory, and the workings unextensive, 
compared with those just described. 
Silverdale Mine. In the south part of Pittsfield, on the Suncook river and the 
Suncook Valley Railroad, is the hamlet known upon the maps as ‘‘ Webster’s Mills,” 
called more recently upon the neighboring guide-boards, ‘‘ Silverdale.” The exploita- 
tion for silver-lead has been on the east side of the river, about one fourth of a mile 
north of the bridge, upon the first bench above the immediate river-bottom. The 
southernmost shaft is that at which the most work has been done, and from which 
the specimens in the state cabinet were taken. A few feet north of this is an untim- 
bered cut, ten feet deep, which simply serves, being dry, to show the vein for that 
slight depth. Several rods further north is a third opening, known as the ‘‘ Couch 
shaft,” apparently off the vein. The two shafts are full of water; but a resident of 
Silverdale, familiar with the workings, states that the first is about 35 and the second 
about 30 feet deep. The vein is a ‘‘ bedded” one, and, along with the synchronous 
country rock, has a general strike N. 34° E., and a dip 85° N. 56° W. It averages 
two feet wide, the gangue of quartz carrying the ore in perpendicular seams running 
parallel to the vein walls. The foot-wall on the east is of white gneiss, reticulated 
with little quartz veins, and its plane of demarcation from the vein is very definitely 
marked. The hanging-wall is indistinctly defined, the vein-rock grading into a quartz 
characterized by greenish-yellow and brown patches of softer mineral, sometimes 
nodular, and sometimes angular in outline. Blende runs through the vein in sheets 
one half inch thick persistently, occasionally widening into bulges one half foot thick, 
blotched with large-crystalled galenite. On the border of the vein the rock carries 
considerable pyrites in minute sprinkled crystals, and occasionally chalcopyrite in 
small blotches. 
A furnace has been erected at the bridge for smelting the galenite under a new 
patent, said to contain original and valuable features. The furnace-house being 
locked and the key temporarily out of town the day the locality was examined, no 
description of it can be given. An assay of the Silverdale ore gave 1.6 ounces of 
silver to the ton. 
Loudon. In the central part of the township of Loudon galena has been exploited 
at the locality called ‘‘Buswell’s Mine.” The opening is on elevated land, the 
aneroid showing a height of 300 feet above Pittsfield station on the Suncook Valley 
Railroad. The shaft was not only full of water, but planked over at the time the spot 
was visited, so that little idea could be formed of the mine. There is plainly no vein, 
the opening having been made in what is apparently the rock of the country, though 
it might, on more extended examination, prove to be an exceedingly wide trappean 
dyke. This rock has a general strike N. 40° E. and dip 80° N. W._ It is porphyritic, 
the included crystals, most commonly one half inch long and one sixteenth wide, 
VOL. Vv. 9 
