Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884
Various
Science -- Periodicals
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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