296 
GEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
GRAPHITE. 
This mineral is quite widely distributed in North Carolina, both in the 
Huronian and Lauren tian formations. There are very fine hand speci- 
mens in the Museum from a number of counties, Person, Yancey, Ca- 
tawba, Cleaveland, Burke and others ; and there are beds of a more or 
less impure, slaty and earthy variety, in several sections of the State, the 
principal of which are two: one in Gaston, Lincoln and Catawba, as a 
constant associate of the argillaceous and talcose slates and shales which 
belong to the King’s Mountain slates; and the other in Wake county. 
The former may be seen at various points crossing the public roads and 
cropping out in the gullies. At Sigmond’s, not far from Catawba Station 
in Catawba county, the bed was opened many years ago, and several bar- 
rels mined ; and within the last year or two a considerable amount of 
trenching and exploration has been made, and several parallel beds are 
reported, three feet and more in thickness. In Cleaveland county there 
are several outcrops also, of a thin seam of a few inches; one of them is 
near MeBrier’s Spring. 
But the Wake county beds are the most extensive, as well as the best 
known graphite beds in the State. They extend in a northeast and south- 
west direction for a distance of sixteen or eighteen miles, passing two and 
a half miles west of Raleigh. There are two beds apparently, forming a 
sharp antichinal. The thickness is two to three, and occasionally four, 
feet. The eastern (and longitudinally the most, extensive) bed is nearly 
vertical, dipping sometimes east, but mostly west, at an angle of 70° to 
90° ; it was opened at a number of points many years ago, and is wrought 
to a considerable extent at present. It is a bed of quartzitic and talco- 
argillaceous slates and shales, which are more or less graphitic — from 
about twenty or thirty to sixty per cent. 
A large bed of a similar character is reported from Alleghany county, 
and a sample sent, which shows 12. 3S per cent, of graphite. 
Many of the Archaean gneisses of the middle and western regions of 
the state contain graphite, along with, or replacing the mica. Speci- 
mens of this description may be seen in the Museum from Forsythe, 
Ashe and other counties. 
Crystallized graphite like that at Tieonderoga, N. Y., is rare in this 
state, although there are a few (small) such specimens in the Museum, 
from different localities. 
Kaolin, Fire Clay, &c. 
From what lias been sail under the head of general geology, it will be 
