OF STRATA. 33 



joimng the granite. Varieties, Gneisseoid, Dalton, Mass. 

 Butterliill, Highlands. Forphi/ritic, Conway, Plainfield, 

 Buckland, Mass, ^Sienitic^ CUp Hill, Johnstown, N. Y. and 

 near Boston, Mass. Contents. Granite^ in veins, Belcher- 

 town, Mass. Jlctynolite^ Cummington, Mass. Augite, Lake 

 George, N. Y. Rarely plumbago, 



4. Talcose Slate, is an aggregate of grains of quartz and Whetstones 

 scales of mica and talc. Subdivisions. Compact, having the ute. 

 laminae so closely united that a transverse section may be 

 wrought into a smooth face. When the quartzose particles 

 are very minute and in a large proportion, it is manufactured 

 into scythe-whetstones, called Quinnebog stones. Fissile, 

 when the laminae separate readily by a blow upon the surface. 

 Varieties. Chloritic, when coloured green by chlorite. In some 

 localities the chlorite seems to form beds ; or rather the rock 

 passes into an aggregate, consisting of quartz, mica, talc, and 

 a large proportion of chlorite. Vast beds of pure chlorite are 

 embraced in this rock ©n Deerfield river, in Florida, Mass.* 

 and in Windham, Vt. 



Localities. Compact, east side of Saddle Mountain Range. 

 Fissile, on the west side of the same range. Variety. It is 

 highly coloured with chlorite in the east part of Savoy. Con- 

 tents. Chlorite, in beds in Savoy and Florida, Mass. contain- 

 ing Octahedral crystals of iron ore, also, near Williams Col- 

 lege, Mass. It contains gold in the Carolinas, and probably 

 throughout its whole range by way of New- York, to Canada. 



* I have recently examined the talcose slate of Florida, Mass., where it 

 crosses Windham, Vt. It does, absolutely, pass into the great soapstone quar- 

 ry of that town ; which is green near its western side, eighteen mites west of Con- 

 necticut river. From fourteen to eighteen miles west of Connecticut river are 

 the most extensive manufactories of this quarry stone, probably, in the world. 

 This stone is certainly a compact variety of the talcose slate of Massachusetts, 

 extending to this place. The beds of soapstone in slaty and crystalline granite, 

 both at Westfield, and Florida, Massachusetts, always connected with serpen- 

 tine, misled Messrs. Hitchcock and Davis. See Silliman's Journal, in which 

 both these very industrious zealots in useful science, mistake the fine slaty vari- 

 ety of granite (gneiss) for mica-slate. There is but very little mica-slate in 

 New-England. The rocks of that district are chiefly gneiss and talcose slate. 

 1 venture to commit myself on this point, because 1 have carefully compared all 

 the alternations of it from the New-York line to the Atlantic, with specimen* la- 

 belled by Prof. Strouve, during the summer of 1829. 



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