IRON ORE GYPSUM. 455 



I have seen this same bed of copper in Hardeman County, at the head of 

 Raggedy Creek, and on the north side of Pease River opposite the mouth of 

 Canal Creek. 



At all the places mentioned in this report there is an abundance of low 

 grade material, and if this kind of material has sufficient copper to pay for 

 its reduction I do not see why they could not be successfully mined. The 

 mining could certainly be done at a much cheaper rate than where a shaft 

 has to be put down and the work carried on in the hard igneous rocks. 



This clay could be lixivated and the copper precipitated or concentrated 

 and in this manner get it in condition for the smelter. While there is a good 

 deal of high grade ore at the different localities, yet I doubt that the mining 

 of them alone could be made to pay. The seams of clay are continuous, but 

 that can not be said of the high grade ores. They are in pockets and are 

 very rich when found, but they can not be relied on as constant ore pro- 

 ducers. 



IRON ORE. 



The iron ore of the Permian formation is principally a carbonate of iron of 

 low grade. It occurs in the red clay of the Wichita division in concretionary 

 form, the masses from the size of a pea to several hundreds of pounds in 

 weight. The disintegration of the clays have caused these masses to accumu- 

 late at the base of the precipices in places in large quantities, and in conve- 

 nient form if the ore shall be found rich enough in metallic iron to make it 

 valuable for smelting purposes. 



The red color of nearly all the clays in this division is due to the oxidiza- 

 tion of the iron contained in them. The oxidization took place at the time 

 of the deposition of the strata. The amount of iron in the clay that forms 

 the coloring matter is very small. 



It is not probable that there is any other iron ore in the Permian series ex- 

 cept those already mentioned. 



The tests made of these ores have not shown them to contain a sufficient 

 amount of metallic iron to make the smelting of them profitable. 



GYPSUM. 



There are two sources of gypsum. One is where the beds are formed after 

 the strata are deposited, by the action of sulphuric acid upon the carbonate of 

 iime. The sulphuric acid acting upon the carbonate of lime, common lime- 

 stone, drives off its carbonic acid and makes sulphate of lime, or gypsum. 

 This was evidently the mode of its formation in New York. In that State 

 •the gypsum does not constitute regular layers in the strata, but is in lentic- 

 ular masses in the formation. Sometimes the lines of stratification pass through 



