62 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
rangement of ore veins and ore deposits in general, nor tlieir outcrops, 
outblows, and so on. 
If we will not swear blindly in verbum magistri, in dicta of one of the 
accepted authorities, the theories and hypotheses hitherto advanced leave 
us in doubt. Shall we accept the lateral secretion theory, so ably de¬ 
fended by Sandberger, or the ascension theory advanced by many others, 
or shall we believe in filling of the veins from above ? 
Now I, for my part, think that there is a difference between author¬ 
ity and infallibility; and having stumbled accidentally on a new idea 
about certain ore veins, I shall lay this idea, and conclusions from it, 
synoptically before the Academy. Perusing many years ago a book 
printed in the year 1689, I found there, among other things, a chapter 
treating of alchemistic work, and in this chapter a passage which reads : 
“Dicis Glauberus quod crescunt calces inetallorum in liquore silicum.” 
This passage became the starting point of my experiments. 
Some months later, working one evening in my laboratory, I dropped 
by accident a piece of sulfate of iron into a beaker containing a solution 
of silicate of soda. Next morning I found in this beaker a number of 
greenish gray strings about one millimeter thick, grown up to the sur¬ 
face of the liquid, spreading there and covering an irregular space of 
more than one centimer square. This part of the growth was of yellow¬ 
ish brown color, and fully three millimeters thick. 
This recalled the above mentioned quotation to my mind. At the 
same time I perceived that this brown growth bore a remarkable resem¬ 
blance to certain vein outcrops known as “ Gossan,” a Cornish name. 
The analysis of the strings as well as of this gossan showed a silicate 
of iron; the strings contained the iron in the shape of protoxyd, the 
gossan as hydrated oxyd. 
I charged now four test tubes with pieces of copperas and a 10 per 
cent solution of soda silicate, at a temperature of nearly 25° centigrade. 
Two of the tubes I set aside. Two of them I submitted for 15 minutes 
to a heat of 90° C., and then let them cool down to the temperature of 
the air (25° C.). 
After two hours I found there were grown in the two first mentioned 
tubes five sprouts. In one three, 3 and 7 millimenters long; in the other 
two, 6 and 11 millimeters long; all of them about 1 millimeter thick, 
nearly straight, their color greenish gray, faintly transparent. 
The growth in the heated tubes was quite different in appearance. One 
of the tubes contained one sprout, which was crooked and knotty, about 
4 centimeters long. Its thickness varied from 2 to 4 millimeters. From 
this trunk, which was of dark greenish brown color, thin smooth strings 
of slightly transparent greenish color were grown to lengths of 0.5 to 1 
centimeter—their thickness about 1 millimeter. 
