62  CONTRIBUTIONS    TO    ECONOMIC    GEOLOGY,  1904.         [bull.  260. 
shifted  tlic  upper  portion  of  the  breccia  to  the  north.  These  oc- 
curred before  the  vein  formation,  as  there  is  no  evidence  that  the  ore 
was  broken.  The  ore  follows  the  bedding  planes  of  the  strata  along 
the  fault  connecting  with  that  in  both  portions  of  the  dislocated 
fissure. 
The  ore  occupies  mainly  what  must  have  been  open  spaces,  as  it 
frequently  shows  the  parallel  banding  known  as  crustincation.  It 
also  enters  the  breccia  material  along  cracks  and  fissures  and  seems 
to  have  replaced  it  in  some  measure,  although  much  action  of  this 
kind  has  been  prevented  by  the  highly  insoluble  aluminouc  nature  of 
the  material. 
The  ore  is  a  high-grade  silver  ore  carrying  from  $20  to  $75  per  ton. 
Pockets  of  ruby  silver  (said  to  be  pyrargyrite)  were  discovered 
shortly  after  the  writer's  visit,  and  are  reported  to  have  contained 
15,000  ounces  per  ton  in  silver.  Gold  is  either  absent  or  present  in 
very  small  quantities. 
The  ore  minerals  are  argentiferous  galena  and  an  argentiferous 
antimonial  sulphide  of  copper  locally  called  "  gray  copper,"  but  t 
probably  closely  related  to  freibergite.  It  is  either  scattered  irregu- 
larly through  the  galena  or  occurs  alone  in  irregular  patches  in  a 
pinkish  white  carbonate  which  presumably  carries  a  considerable 
amount  of  manganese. 
The  gangue  minerals  are  quartz,  barite,  and  country  rock,  angular 
fragments  of  which  are  frequently  found  in  the  eastern  portion  of  the 
mine.  The  ore  contains  increasingly  large  quantities  of  barite  as  one 
passes  westward  from  the  tunnel  toward  the  Wedge  mine,  where  some 
parts  of  the  vein  are  no  more  than  a  solid  tabular  mass  of  massive 
white  barite  about  3  feet  in  width.  A  little  of  the  manganese-bearing 
carbonate  occurs  and  is  usually  associated  with  the  gray  copper.  It 
is  not  a  prominent  gangue  mineral.  The  Bachelor  mine  alone,  exclu- 
sive of  the  Wedge,  has  produced  betAveen  $1,000,000  and  $-2,000,000, 
although  unfavorable  conditions  have  materially  lowered  the  profits 
derived  from  its  exploitation.  If  the  Wedge,  Neodesha,  and  Pony 
Express  were  included  in  the  estimate,  the  total  production  would  be 
very  much  increased.  Exact  figures  on  these  properties  have  not  yet 
been  obtained. 
The  vein  does  not  outcrop  at  the  surface,  but  owing  to  the  very 
slight  faulting  involved  in  the  formation  of  the  fissure  it  is  lost  in  a 
mere  distortion  of  the  black  shales  which  form  its  cap.  These  show 
an  irregular  twisting  and  distortion  in  the  near  neighborhood  of  the 
vein,  but  no  fissure  is  observable  and  not  even  the  dike  itself  can  be 
traced  upward  into  them.  They  have  acted  essentially  as  a  plastic 
medium,  and  even  in  the  often  repeated  differential  movements — the 
formation  of  the  breccia,  the  later  lateral,  vertical,  and  horizontal 
movement — they  have  not  been  sensibly  ruptured.     The  black  shall 
