PRODUCTIONS OF THE HIMALAYA. 



255 



from Bhamdori to Almorah, it passes into the variety called scaly iron 

 ORE, consisting of loosely cohering glimmering particles of a steel grey or 

 iron black color, strongly soiling and feeling unctuous to tlie touch. These 

 beds, though distant many miles, are, I think, connected beneath, and 

 from one and the same deposit. — Both of these varieties are said to yield 

 very good iron; the first, particularly. Compact red iron ore, occUrs in 

 a clay slate containing beds of lime-stone at Katsdri, on the Rdmganga, 

 in masses composed apparently of fragments more or less angular, reunit- 

 ed by a stalagmitic incrustation. The iron manufactured from it is esteem- 

 ed the best in the province of Kamdun. It is the only ore which has any 

 adjunct of calcareous matter ; and to this adjustment of the flux by nature, 

 is attributable, I think, the superiority of the iron produced. Near Kalsi 

 on the ./mwa, there is an extensive bed of specular iron ore. The speci- 

 mens which I have examined were fine granular, approaching to compact. 



In Chawgarha purgunnah, one of the excepted mines, the ore is the 

 YELLOW {oT ht/drated) oxide. It is of two varieties, the ochry and compact. 

 The former sometimes contains octahedral crystals of magnetic iron ore, and 

 in the neighbourhood of the mine, on the summit of a small hill, there occur 

 rolled pieces, qomposed of grains of quartz, and small octahedral crystals of 

 this mineral, cemented together. These pieces are magnets, and have each 

 two poles. The ores of this mine contain manganese in small proportion, 

 and would, consequently, afford a very good steel ; as it is to the alloy of 

 this metal that the superiority of the steel manufactured from some of 

 the brown iron stones, is generally attributed. The other exception is 

 the mine at Sil, in Biseher, where a mica slate occurs with disseminat- 

 ed crystals, or grains of magnetic iron ore; in such quantity, asinfavora- 

 rable specimens, to equal half the weight, or one-third the bulk. Some 

 pieces of this slate have a specific gravity of 3,45. That of the ore itself 

 is 4,8. The stone is reduced to powder by hand mills ; and by means of 



a running 



