44 The American Geologist. January, 1903. 
aid us in studying' the formation of minerals. I refer to min- 
erals found on timbers and tools in abandoned mines, on metal- 
lic utensils buried for years, on slags exposed to the elements 
and the like. In these there is an element of the artificial. 
Man has accidentally placed the objects which are acted upon 
in certain favorable places but has not directed the conditions 
of the experiments. In this connection we recall Daubree's clas- 
sic researches on the minerals found in the Roman baths at the 
thermal springs of Plombieres. 
But it is minerals formed upon and at the expense of buried 
coins that I wish to consider now. The coins heretofore de- 
scribed are Roman coins, found in France, Algeria, Corsica, 
and England. Four out of the five minerals observed on our 
Chinese coins have been observed on these Roman coins. 
In grading the grounds of the William Nast College (for 
Chinese) at Kiukiang, China, a pot of buried coins was discov- 
ered. The pot contained about five thousand copper coins. 
They were brought to this country by bishop David H. Moore 
of the Methodist Episcopal church, and one of them is given as 
a souvenir receipt to everyone who subscribes a dollar toward 
the fund for a college dormitory. No facts regarding the oc- 
currence of the coins were obtainable. They are the circular 
"cash" with a square hole in the center. On some of them 
the inscription is well preserved and, according to the printed 
slip accompanying them, the coinage is of the Kang dynasty, 
Kai Yuan reign, seventh century. The writer had the oppor- 
tunitv of looking over several hundred coins in the possession 
of bishop Moore, to whom he wishes to express his thanks. As 
a rule the coins are not much corroded. On many the inscrip- 
tions are plain and a few strokes of the file usually reveals 
the bright metal of the coin which is largely copper. The 
minerals observed are cuprite, malachite, azurite, copper, and 
cerussite. Many of the coins have little, if any, of these min- 
erals while others are almost completely covered on both sides. 
Some have only one or two of the minerals while others have 
three or four or in one case live. On one coin, one mineral 
may be dominant, on another it may be a different mineral. 
Though some of the coins have cuprite on one side and the 
copper carbonates on the other there is no regularity of such 
distribution. In the case of three of the copper minerals, there 
