THE 
AMERICAN GEOLOGIST 
Vou. IX. APRIL, 1892. No. 4 
A HITHERTO UNDESCRIBED PHENOMENON IN 
HAZMATITE. 
By W. 8S. Gres.tey, F. G. She Erie, Pa. 
The specimen of which a portion is reproduced in photography 
(see plate v) is one of several hand samples kindly lent to 
the writer by a Miss Culver, of Erie, Pennsylvania, and it is to 
be regretted that all she can tell him about them is that a friend, 
who makes trips to the lake Superior iron region, occasionally 
sarrying cargoes of ore to Erie, gave them to her about a year 
ago, so that the exact locality, the name of mine, nature of 
ordinary deposit in which they were found, depth, and so forth, 
cannot (at present, at all events) be ascertained. 
The ore is a_ fibrous red hematite, evidently of great purity 
(possibly 70 per cent. metallic iron), reddish-blue in color, of 
smooth and somewhat unctuous feel, and very compact and tough 
looking; small groups or bundles of the fibres chink like iron 
nails when shaken up together in the hand. The fibres run ina 
curved form, thus giving the hand-specimens a more or less 
curved or horny shape. The samples examined vary in length 
between two and nine inches, but as the longest of them has lost 
its inner extremity, its roof or commencement of growth, so to 
speak, it may have been an inch or two longer when whole. The 
specimens do not fit or exactly belong to one another, but from 
their peculiar likeness have evidently all come from the same 
deposit or mass in the mine, wherever that may have been. The 
center or centers of formation appear as small flat cavities. (7. ¢., 
supposing the thin ends of the fragments examined represent the 
commencement of their formation outwards around these nuclei. ) 
