1842.] Notes on the Iron of the Kasia Hills. 857 



No. 7, 8. Slags from the smelting. 



No. 9. Dross detached by beating with wooden club. 



No. 10. Metal as sold in pigs at three rupees eight annas a maund. 



No. 11. Metal further refined. 



No. 12. Is a specimen of slate found about twenty miles from Cherra 

 near the Assam road. I should be glad to know any particulars of 

 the proper mode of working and splitting slate,* and whether it is 

 usually of better quality below the surface. This (found at the sur- 

 face) does not split into plates sufficiently thin, nor sufficiently parallel. 



There is, I am told, an account of the iron works in these hills 

 by Mr. Cracroft, in an old number of the Asiatic Society's Journal. 

 Not having access to the former volumes of the Journal, I cannot 

 tell whether it is such as to render these notes superfluous. 



Cherra Poonjee, 21st September 1842. 



* This was duly sent.— H. P. 



Note by the Curator Museum of Economic Geology. — The granite has nothing 

 remarkable about it, and the iron sand is so minutely dispersed, that it can only be 

 traced at times by a commencement of oxidation. The boulders are of silex. 



The ore is composed of minute amorphous grains of the common iron sand, remark- 

 ably equal in size, and amongst which all traces of crystallisation have almost disap- 

 peared, for it is rare to detect any thing approaching to even an imperfect crystal. 

 Upon digesting some of the slags with muriatic acid, I find that they contain sul- 

 phuret of iron (which accounts perhaps for the inferior quality of the metal) but no 

 titanium was detected. Minute specks of the sulphuret resembling gold-coloured mica 

 are visible on close examination in the granite.— H. P. 



Captain Thos. Hutton on Galeodes (vorax?) 



In the 52d and 53d Numbers of the Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History, are two letters from Messrs. W. S. Macleay and W. E. Shuck- 

 ard, relating to the occasional capture of small birds by certain spe- 

 cies of Arachnidae ; and as the subject is one of some interest, I take 

 the liberty of presenting you with a note long since made by me, on 

 the habits of a large species of Galeodes, common to some parts of 

 India, and for which, if undescribed, I would propose the name of 

 " Galeodes vorax." 



