No. IGl.] 
199 
presence of earth, or soil containing oxide of iron, reduces the 
degree of oxidation, and enables the water, by the aid of the new- 
ly formed carbonic acid, to take up the iron, which it again sets 
free in coming out to the air at a lower level. It is to this cause 
that very many chalybeate springs are owing, as well, also, that 
whiteness of soil, common to all low, wet grounds. 
From the existence of iron in the frontier counties, being seated 
in the midst of forests, and from their proximity to the bituminous 
coal of Pennsylvania, they, no doubt, at no distant day, will be ad- 
vantageously worked; and when we shall have made the same 
progress in the extraction of iron, and mining of coal, as has been 
made in Great Britain, we shall then be aware of the vast extent 
of our mineral wealth, some idea of which may be formed from a 
lease of sixteen years, recently given in Scotland, of 200 acres, 
containing iron ore, for about $45,000 per year. 
Iron Pyrites has many localities in the 4th district, but is most 
abundant near Eighteen Mile creek on the shore of Lake Erie, in 
the pyritiferous rock of Professor Eaton, both in the slate and lime- 
stone, of which a full description was given in the survey of the 
Erie canal. 
From the connection existing between organic productions and 
pyrites, and the decomposition of pyrites, as the probable cause of 
all the gas springs and petroleum occurring, from Steuben county 
to Lake Erie, it may be well to make a few remarks upon this mi- 
neral, whose importance, merely as regards iron and gypsum, can 
not be overrated. 
There are two kinds of pyrites in nature, perfectly agreeing in 
chemical composition, but differing wholly in almost every other 
respect. One kind undergoes no change by exposure to the air 
unless previously subjected to heat. It is found in the primitive 
class of rock, and in a few others that are less ancient than that 
class. The other, the kind which is found in our district, readily 
changes when exposed to the atmosphere, and seems to date its ex- 
istence from the commencement of vegetable and animal organiza- 
tion. So constant, for example, is the connection between the de- 
composing kind of pyrites and fossil vegetable matter, that anthra- 
cite, bituminous coal, lignite and fossil wood, are invariably asso- 
ciated with it. 
