ORES OF THE CHAMPLAIM, TACONIC AND METAMORPHIC ROCKS. 
493 
Clove, about one hundred feet high. The bed is bounded on the east by a ridge of limestone. 
A bed of white clay, or “fuller’s earth” as it is called by the miners, rests upon the ore as- 
at Fishkill. The southernmost of the ore beds-at this place is worked by the Messrs. Ster¬ 
ling, and does not make as good iron as the others-, though the ore is richer, and yields a 
greater proportion of iron. The ore at this place is mostly the fibrous hematite, similar to 
that of the Indian-pond ore bed in Salisbury. 
Dover ore beds. The hemiatitic ore is found in several places in Dover. One is about a 
mile south of the furnace, and it supplies a part of the ore used at the Dover furnace. A 
small quantity was dug some years ago about two or three miles north of Hurd’s corners. 
Prof. Merrick saw loose masses of hematite at almost every step,” in some places on the 
hill-side on the east flank of the Dover valley, between Hurd’s corners and Dover plains. A 
few years ago, hematite to the amount of a few tons was dug in the southeast corner of 
Dover. 
Prof. Beck has described the principal ore bed in Dover as follows: 
“Fo5s’ ore bed. Proceeding from the Clove ore bed in a northwestern (northeastern?)- 
direction, after crossing the Chesnut ridge, we come to a deposit of ore known by the above 
name, in the town of Dover, about a mile and a half west-southwest from the furnace of the 
Dover Iron Company. This bed is situated in a valley between two spurs of the mountain 
which passes through this part of the country, and it is particularly interesting, as showing 
the association of the hematite with the mica slate, which occurs here in strata of some thick¬ 
ness, and contains garnets of various sizes. In extent, however, this bed appears to be infe¬ 
rior to those already noticed” (in Fishkill and Unionvale). “The ore is in much larger 
masses, and is not only more difiicultly reduced to powder, but contains a larger proportion 
of foreign substances.”* 
Amenia ore bed. The Amenia and Salisbury ore beds are the most extensively wrought of 
any iron mines, of this kind of ore, in the United States, and the iron from these beds is con¬ 
sidered superior in softness and toughness to that of any other mines in the country. 
The Amenia ore bed yiel(K five thousand tons of ore per annum, which gives on an average 
fifty per centum of pig iron. The mine is worked to the day like an open quarry. A layer of 
earth and gravel, and broken rocks, covers the ore from five to twenty feet in thickness. This 
is first removed, and the ore then excavated. They have not yet found the bottom of the 
ore in any place, although in one pit they have excavated into it forty-five feet. It improves in¬ 
quality the farther they descend. No estimate can be formed of the amount of ore in this bed, 
which probably unites with the others north and south of it. Estimating its breadth at one 
hundred yards-, and its length at one thousand yards, with fifteen yards depth, through which 
it is open, it is capable of yielding 1,500,000 tons of ore, and at the present rate of working- 
will last three hundred years. 
First Annual Geological Report, 1837, p. 36. 
