54 CORUNDUM, ITS OCCURRENCE AND DISTRIBUTION. 
seams to 8 inches, with some that are very much wider, from which 
fibrous masses have been obtained 20 to 30 inches long. It is these 
veins of fibrous anthophyllite that constitute the asbestos of the Pel- 
ham quarry. 
The harzburgite is separated from the gneiss by a band of bronze- 
colored biotite, usually 4 to 8 inches thick, but in places reaching a 
thickness of 4 feet. In this wider portion there are nodules or imper- 
fect crystals of corundum of a grayish color mottled with blue. 
These are often wrapped with chlorite. Nodules of a black-green 
hornblende and an emerald-green actinolite are also found in the 
biotite. There has been no great quantity of the corundum found. 
This zone of biotite is probably the result of contact metamorphism 
of the harzburgite on the gneiss, and the inclosing corundum was 
formed at the same time. This is similar to the large quantity of 
corundum occurring in biotite at the contact of harzburgite and gneiss 
of the Bad Creek mine, Sapphire, N. C. (See p. 125.) 
CORUNDUM IN MICA-SCHIST. 
Occurrences of corundum in mica-schist have been observed at a 
number of widely separated localities, but at none of them has the 
corundum been found in large quantity. 
In North Carolina, just south of the divide in the Cow^ee Moun- 
tains, in a gap at the head of Ellija^^ Creek, Macon County, corun- 
dum occurs in a decomposed, friable, garnetiferous mica-schist. The 
corundum is bluish gray and occurs in grains and small nodules. 
The schist sometimes carries scales of graphite, and in places is 
quite gneissic in character. Limestones occur within half a mile 
southwest of this locality and at intervals for 2 miles in the same 
direction. Some years ago this deposit was worked to a limited 
extent; it is known as the " Haskett mine.'' 
Two miles southwest of Balsam Gap, in Jackson County, N. C, 
masses of cyanite with some corundum are to be found in the mica- 
schist in a railroad cut a few hundred feet east of a large body of 
peridotite. The schist is in some places garnetiferous; sometimes 
it shows also small amounts of scaly graphite; and in some portions 
a gneissoid character is developed. Similar masses of corundum - 
bearing cyanite have also been found on the surface in the vicinity. 
An occurrence in many ways similar to the last is fomid at Retreat, 
6 miles southeast of Waynesville, on West Fork of Pigeon River, in 
Haywood County, N. C. Corundum, with and without associated 
cyanite, is found over the surface in irregular masses and barrel- 
shaped crystals. The rocks are garnetiferous mica-schist with 
gneissic facies, as at Balsam Gap, and are intersected in places by 
small pegmatite dikes. Much of the corundum is wrapped in a 
thin coating of a very compact material resembling damourite. 
