Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 133 pages of information about Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884.

Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 133 pages of information about Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884.

1.  Thousands of mineral veins in this and other countries occur in regions remote from eruptive rocks.  Into this category come most of those of the eastern half of the Continent, viz., Canada, New England, the Alleghany belt, and the Mississippi Valley.  Among those I will refer only to a few selected to represent the greatest range of character, viz., the Victoria lead mine, near Sault Ste. Marie, the Bruce copper mine on Lake Huron, the gold-bearing quartz veins of Madoc, the Gatling gold vein of Marmora, the Acton and the Harvey Hill copper mines of Canada, the copper veins of Ely, Vermont, and of Blue Hills, Maine, the silver-bearing lead veins of Newburyport, Mass.; most of the segregated gold veins of the Alleghany belt, the lead veins of Rossie, Ellenville, and at other localities farther South; the copper bearing veins of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee; the veins carrying argentiferous galena in Central Kentucky and in Southern Illinois; the silver, copper, and antimony veins of Arkansas; and the lead and zinc deposits of Missouri and the Upper Mississippi.

In these widely separated localities are to be found fissure, segregated, and gash veins, and a great diversity of ores, which have been derived, sometimes from the adjacent rocks—­as in the segregated veins of the Alleghany belt and the gash veins of the Mississippi region—­and in other cases—­where they are contained in true fissure veins—­from a foreign source, but all deposited without the aid of superficial igneous rocks, either as contributors of matter or force.

2.  In the great mineral belt of the Far West, where volcanic emanations are so abundant, and where they have certainly played an important part in the formation of ore deposits, the great majority of veins are not in immediate contact with trap rocks, and they could not, therefore, have furnished the ores.

A volume might be formed by a list of the cases of this kind, but I can here allude to a few only, most of which I have myself examined, viz.: 

(a.) The great ore chambers of the San Carlos Mountains in Chihuahua, the largest deposits of ore of which I have any knowledge.  These are contained in heavy beds of limestone, which are cut in various places by trap dikes, which, as elsewhere, have undoubtedly furnished the stimulus to chemical action that has resulted in the formation of the ore bodies, but are too remote to have supplied the material.

(b.) The silver mines of Santa Eulalia, in Chihuahua, from which during the last century one hundred and twelve millions of dollars were taken, opened on ore deposits situated in Cretaceous limestones like those of San Carlos, and apparently similar ore-filled chambers; an igneous rock caps the hills in the vicinity, but is nowhere in contact or even proximity to the ore bodies. (See Kimball, Amer.  Jour.  Sci,.  March, 1870.)

(c.) The great chambers of Tombstone, and the copper veins of the Globe District, the Copper Queen, etc., in Arizona.

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Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.