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GEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
The principal beds may be safely estimated on an average of four feet, 
and in the best mining localities, the average yield of a long gang-way 
may reach five feet/’ “It is evident that centuries of heavy mining 
could not exhaust it, for each of two or three principal beds may be en- 
tered and mined at fifty places.” 
The kind of ore has been stated in general terms as titaniferous mag- 
netite. More particularly, not only titanium, but chromium and manga- 
nese are uniformly present, as will be seen from Dr. Genth’s analyses, 
given below. “ The ore belongs to the family of primary ores, the same 
family to which the Champlain (or Adirondack) ores, the Marqwette (Lake 
Superior) ores, and the ore of the Iron Mountain in Missouri, belong. It 
is very similar to the New Jersey ores, which are so extensively mined 
for the furnaces on the Lehigh river. It is a mixture of magnetic crystals 
and specular plates of sesquioxide of iron, with quartz, felspar and mica, 
in a thousand varying proportions. Sometimes the bed will be composed 
of heavy, tight, massive magnetite (or titaniferous magnetite), with very 
little quartz, &c.; at other times, of a loose, half-decomposed mica-slate, 
or gneiss rock, full of scattered crystals of magnetic iron. The ore is, in 
fact, a decomposable gneiss rock, with a varying percentage of titaniferous 
magnetic and specular iron ore, sometimes constituting half the mass, and 
sometimes almost the whole of it.” 
Dr. Genth, who made a special chemical and mineralogical study of 
these ores, says in his report, published in the Mining Register , “ All 
the ores consist of mixtures of magnetic iron with titaniferous hematite, 
or menaccanite, probably also with rutile (titanic acid), mixed with a 
chloritic mineral, or a silvery micacious one resulting from its decompo- 
sition. Some of the ores contain alumina in the form of granular cor- 
undum, in one or two places in such quantities that they become true 
emery ores. None of the constituents could be separated in a state of 
such purity that in all cases their true mineralogical character could be 
verified by analysis.” 
But besides these characteristic ores of the beds described, Dr. Lesley 
mentions beds of ochre of various sizes, “ as one of the constituent ele- 
ments of the whole formation. What the exact relationship of these 
ochre beds to the magnetic ore beds, I do not know. But the ochre out- 
crop seems to be always in the immediate vicinity of the ore beds. The 
largest exhibition of ochre which I saw, is on the I. Seiners plantation, 
on Brushy Creek. Here an ochre bed twenty feet thick rises, nearly ver- 
tical, out of a gully in a hillside covered with small pieces of fine, com- 
pact ore. The whole aspect of this place gives an impression of an 
