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Moreover, it should be remembered that experiments with the divining-rod are generally made in a district known to be metalliferous, and therefore the chances are greatly in favour of its bending over or near a mineral lode.
The grunsteins of Tucutunemo, which we consider as constituting the same formation as the serpentine rock, contain veins of malachite and copper-pyrites. These same metalliferous combinations are found also in Franconia, in the grunsteins of the mountains of Steben and Lichtenberg.
Much of the importance of mineral veins is due to the fact that they are often metalliferous, carrying valuable native metals and metallic ores disseminated in fine particles, in strings, and sometimes in large masses in the midst of the valueless nonmetallic minerals which make up what is known as the VEIN STONE.
There was scarcely a mineral beneath the loamy soil which masked the metalliferous rock which they did not work.
Into what an incomprehensible maze of words should we be betrayed, were we to attempt a description of the multifarious operations for the extraction and refining of metals! Every description of ore, or metalliferous deposit, requires a different treatment: each suggested and verified by laborious experience and vigilant attention.
The term "FORMATION," which I have used in the above explanation, expresses in geology any assemblage of rocks which have some character in common, whether of origin, age, or composition. Thus we speak of stratified and unstratified, fresh-water and marine, aqueous and volcanic, ancient and modern, metalliferous and non-metalliferous formations.
A large proportion of metalliferous veins have their opposite walls nearly parallel, and sometimes over a wide extent of country. There is a fine example of this in the celebrated vein of Andreasburg in the Hartz, which has been worked for a depth of 500 yards perpendicularly, and 200 horizontally, retaining almost everywhere a width of three feet.
The gneiss of the littoral Cordillera, in the province of Caracas, contains almost exclusively garnets, rutile titanite and graphite, disseminated in the whole mass of the rock, shelves of granular limestone, and some metalliferous veins.
Piran, the patron saint of tinners, would hardly have called down such a curse, though he might have done so if greatly provoked. But if not metalliferous, much of the parish is exceptionally fertile and verdant, in contrast to the barrenness of the Goonhilly Downs.
The region we have been here describing separates the waters which flow to the Orinoco from those which run into the immense lake of Maracaybo and the Caribbean Sea. It includes climates which may be termed temperate rather than hot; and it is looked upon in the country, notwithstanding the distance of more than a hundred leagues, as a prolongation of the metalliferous soil of Pamplona.
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