496 
GEOLOGY OF THE FIRST DISTRICT. 
White limestone is seen at the line or very near it. Mica slate succeeds on the east, and 
contains a few garnets and crystals of staurotide. The ore is apparently stratified when seen 
at the distance of a few rods, dipping at an angle of thirty to forty degrees to the eastward. 
Thin layers of clay from the decomposed rock are more or less interstratified with the ore. 
The valley in which Ore hill is located, seems to be a part of a broad transverse valley which 
crosses the range of hills at an angle about S. 65° to 70° E. 
Beautiful specimens of hematite are obtained from these ore beds. The specular hematite 
is as brilliant as the finest burnished metal. The mammillary and botryoidal forms are very 
beautiful, and the fibrous and stalactitical forms are also very rich and beautiful. The stalac- 
titical forms are different here from those at the Amenia and some other ore beds. They are 
hemispherical at their lower ends, and nipple-shaped and rarely acuminated. The stalactites 
at all the ore beds are fibrous, radiating from the centre to the circumference. 
Boston-corner ore bed. “ On the eastern borders of the State, near Ancram, the hematitic 
ore is also found; and at a place called.Boston corners, between the State of New-York 
and Connecticut, is an extensive deposit of it.”* I did not see the locality above mentioned. 
Iron ore was dug for one season in the low loam and gravel hill next the Taconic mountain, 
and about in the line between the Copake and Salisbury ore beds. 
Copake ore bed, two miles northeast of Copake flats, is worked, but not extensively. It 
yields about fifteen hundred tons per annum. The limestone crops out a little west of the 
bed, and mica slate also not far on the east. The ore is probably abundant at a greater depth, 
but the mine may become a wet one if it be dug much deeper. An ore bed has also been 
opened two or three miles south of the above, and a mile or two north of Boston corners, in 
Massachusetts. 
Limestone was observed a little west of the Copake ore bed, like that of the valley of the 
Copake, and so on to Barnegate ; and a little to the east, the rock is a chloritic talco-micaceous 
slate, containing grains of magnetic oxide of iron. The ore bed is about a mile west of 
Taconic falls, at the western base of Mount Washington. The ore is compact, earthy, geo- 
diferous, stalactitical, fibrous, mammillary, botryoidal, etc. The ore bed seems to be situated 
under the alluvial and quaternary deposits of the valley. The strata overlying and covering 
the ore consist of pebble and gravel beds, and some of the ore itself seems to have been 
washed and rolled. 
Hillsdale ore beds. Prescotfs ore bed is one and a half miles north of the Columbia 
turnpike, in Hillsdale. It is bounded on the west by limestone, like those of Amenia, Indian 
pond, Fishkill, &cc. This locality was discovered many years ago, and forty tons of ore 
picked out of the bed of the brook, and reduced in a forge. It was not much worked until 
1822, when Mr. C. Prescott began the manufacture of yellow ochre at this place. The ore 
* Prof. Beck, First Annual Geological Report of New-York, 1837, p. 38. 
