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About two hours walk northweft of Molina, 
there is a little hill called Platilla; it extends 
about half a league over, from valley to valley; its 
body is a folid, rocky, white granite, through which 
run, in different directions, and without any order, an 
infinite number of blue, green, and yellow veins of 
rich copper oar, which holds a little filver, minera- 
lized by a great quantity of arfenick and fulphur : the 
very furface of the rock is in many places ftained. 
blue, and green, and the veins of oar are not above a 
foot deep. In the fiffures, and in the folid rock, is 
contained lead oar, which is fometimes found even on 
the furface ; and yet the following plants grow out of 
the foil, which covers thefe arfenical fulphurous veins, 
and is not more than a foot deep; true oak, flax, white 
thorn, juniper, cyftus, wild-rofe, uva urfi, phlomis, 
verbafcum, ftoechas, fage, thyme, ferpillum, rofe- 
mary, and many others, which it would take up too 
much time to mention. The earth of this fame 
hill is covered with the famefweet fmall grafs as the 
reft of the country. 
I have alfo made the fame obfervations, out of 
Spain, at the three greateft mines in Europe, 
viz. St. Mary of the mines in Alfatia ; Clauffhal, in 
the Hartz-mountains of Hanover; and Frayberg, in 
Saxony. 
The mines of St. Mary are at the head of a valley. 
Its hills are fome of them covered with oak, pines, 
and others with apple, pear, plum and cherry, and 
others, with fine grafs downs. The tops of others 
are fields of wheat, which, in the year 1759, as I 
found by my notes, gave a produce of eight for one. 
All thefe vegetables grow in a foil, a foot or two deep, 
which 
