Three distinct kinds of asbestos are said to be found in Italy, viz., Grey, Flossy, and Powdery. The grey is a long, fibrous variety, possessing, in addition to strength, the much-prized saponaceous quality; and this is mostly found in the two Alpine valleys of Valtellina and d'Aosta. The flossy, which has a smooth, silky appearance, but a dry feeling when touched, is found and worked in part of the chain of mountains which bound the valley leading from Susa to Turin, and at an elevation of about 8,000 feet above the sea level. This is the kind which is mostly used in the manufacture of gas stoves. It is commonly found in thicker seams than the grey, lying mostly in a horizontal direction, but dipping rapidly as the rock is entered. The third is a powdery kind, which, while possessing all the heat-resisting properties of the two others, crumbles in the hand when touched. This variety is found in the same range of mountains as that last mentioned, but at a much lower level; it appears to have been first brought to light by a landslip exposing to view a seam of it three feet wide. When first seen it is said to have had a pasty consistency, but on exposure to the air it dried and crumbled into powder. Italian ore, generally speaking, is won by running driftways, or tunnelling into the face of the rock. In Canada the mineral is got out by open quarrywork, no tunnelling there being possible. The serpentine rock in which the asbestos or chrysotile is there found is so split and seamed in every conceivable direction by the veins and stringers that if tunnelling were attempted the first blast would inevitably bring the whole superincumbent mass down about your ears. You might as well attempt to tunnel through loose sand or gravel. In other words, the relative difference in the two modes of winning the ore appears to be that the Italian asbestos may be said to be won by tunnelling into the face of the rock; whilst the Canadian chrysotile is found in veins, running, it is true, with the greatest irregularity, but yet with a distinctly perpendicular declension. The Italian variety, again, seems frequently to be found, or the seams to end, in pockets, some of which have been known to contain a ton or a ton and a half of asbestos, after exhaustion of which all appearance of its presence ceased. The Canadian ore, on the other hand, generally runs in veins and seams, which almost invariably improve both in quantity and quality the lower you go down, but where or how it ends has never yet been discovered.