432 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
is sometimes called a slicken side, it has a smooth, fine polish 
as though it had received a vitreous coating put on by a glazier. 
From this leading fissure the sandstone pitches to the south in 
thin friable layers that will crumble in the hand, and is highly 
impregnated with this oxide of iron fora great many feet each 
side of it, and as far down as the sandstone is exposed in the 
valley. This is one of many places along this belt, as well as 
through the lead district, that must settle forever the fact that 
the sandstone of the lead district has been acted upon and fis¬ 
sured by mechanical forces from below. 
And when we take into consideration the fact that these de¬ 
posits are found deep down in the Potsdam, (as well as in the 
sandstone above) and that too at a point not far above the 
azoic rocks; and when we consider further, that in similar and 
parallel elevations not far to the north, where the stratum is 
still thinner with but few feet of the sandstone left on the 
azoic, masses of iron ore are found protruding through the sand¬ 
stone, as at Ironton in Sauk county, on the western extension 
of the Baraboo elevation—where we have unmistakable eviden¬ 
ces of metamorphic action in the quartzites ; and when we con¬ 
sider still further that to the north of the Baraboo elevation, 
where the azoic rocks come to the surface, they present parallel 
ridges, and that along the centre of some of them we find long 
ranges of iron ore conforming in their bearings and extension 
to these belts of ochre and oxide deposits, we see there is good 
reason, indeed every reason, to suppose they have their origin 
in physical causes acting from below. 
This supposition becomes almost a demonstration when we 
consider, also, the peculiar adaptation of the azoic rocks, and the 
physical conditions that prevailed at the period of their forma¬ 
tion favorable to the formation of iron deposits. This subject 
is presented in Foster and Whitney’s report of Lake Superior, 
better than I can do it, consequently I will introduce a portion 
of their remarks in this connection: 
“We may conceive that the various rocks of the azoic series were 
originally deposited in a nearly horizontal position, at a period prior to the 
appearance of organic life upon the earth; that these stratified deposits 
