154 
AMERICAN GEOLOGY. 
LIMONITE OR HEMATITIC ORES OF IRON. 
§ 92. The geological position of this ore in New England 
and New York is not well determined; but when in beds it 
seems to be enclosed in materials very similar to drift. But the 
drift beds have been derived from distant places; and as the 
rocks are rarely uncovered, it has been up to this time an un¬ 
answered question, where this ore belonged. At Adams, Berk¬ 
shire, Massachusetts, the ore has been traced apparently to a 
vein in the quartz rock, near its junction with mica slate of the 
Hoosick mountain. Farther south, in Maryland, Virginia, and 
North Carolina, limonite occurs in veins. The most conclusive 
facts bearing upon the geological position of limonite have been 
disclosed in Cherokee county in North Carolina, in the vicinity 
of Murphy. It occurs upon the surface, rising up like mounds 
which cover several acres. When it had been observed at the 
copper mines in Ducktown that this kind of ore covered the 
black oxide of copper, those mounds were explored by cuts and 
shafts in expectation of finding copper. Though these explo¬ 
rations terminated in disappointment, yet it was discovered that 
those mounds of iron ore surmounted a vein which, near its sur¬ 
face, was composed of gossan mixed with sulphuret of iron, but 
no copper. In all those cases where gossan was cut entirely 
through, the back of the vein was found intermixed with sul¬ 
phuret of iron only. I was quite satisfied that the prospect of 
finding copper was too uncertain to warrant the prosecution of 
the object when the expenses were likely to become con¬ 
siderable. 
The accumulation of mounds or masses of the hydrous per¬ 
oxide of iron or gossan many feet beneath the surface, is 
owing, first, to the ordinary decomposition of veins of sulphu¬ 
ret of iron, and the breaking down of the rock as the process 
proceeds; and the debris remains, as the country in this 
latitude has never been subjected to causes which disperse and 
scatter it abroad after the decomposition. At the north, how- 
