Occurrence of Carbon combined with Hydrogen: Blende and galena have been deposited in coal in the outlying basins of the Coal Measures, scattered along the broad, northern marginal belt of the Ozark Uplift.
Near the reservoir at Sedalia, Mo., a basin in the Second Magnesian Limestone carries a little coal of fair quality, in which dark brown crystalline blende occurs in small irregular bunches and in sheets filling both the vertical and horizontal seams and joints. The greater part of the blende is in sheets, ½ to 1½ in. thick, made up of agglomerated imperfect crystals, compressed or flattened between the layers of the coal. Some specimens show blende in thin parallel seams, not thicker than a sheet of paper and 1/32 to 1/16 in. apart, distributed regularly through the coal. About 2 tons of blende were mined at this locality.
In Morgan and Moniteau counties, Mo., in a number of places, blende and galena are found in similar deposits of coal. At Martin’s coal-bank, near Versailles, Mo., the coal has evidently been disturbed since its deposition, and vertical seams in the coal, ¼ in. to 1 in. in width, are filled with sheets of crystalline blende and galena in a gangue of calcite and white tallow-clay. The strike of the lines of disturbance of the coal, prolonged 500 to 1000 feet southerly, crosses an extensive tract of old surface-workings in the Second Magnesian Limestone. The ground is thickly covered by shallow pits, dug in search of lead-ore. These deposits of lead were apparently formed through the agency of the same system of fissures that introduced the ore in the coal.
Blende and galena were formerly mined at Simpson’s coal- bank, in Moniteau county. The coal is a hard cannel, filling a basin in the Second Magnesian Limestone; the ores occur in seams, seldom more than an inch in thickness, in the joints of the coal. The ore incidentally obtained in mining the coal afforded an occasional shipment to the smelters.
Vanadium is found in a lignite coal in the province of Mendoza, Argentine Republic. The ashes of this coal carry vanadic acid, V2O5. It also occurs in anthracite mined near Yauli, Peru.
Gold has been repeatedly reported in the ash of the Cretaceous coals of the West. H. M. Chance records that the coal of the Cambria Coal Co. near Newcastle, Wyoming, is said, by the chemist of the company, to carry gold. Mr. H. Rives Ellis, of Salt Lake City, informs the writer that he obtained an average of 60 to 80 cents gold per ton of ash from the Pleasant Valley, Utah, and Kemmerer, Wyoming, coals. In this connection, the paper by G. A. Koenig and M. Stockder is of interest, although the coal described appears to be more nearly an infusible hydrocarbon, such as might result from the partial oxygenation of albertite.
Mr. Henry Sewell describes the occurrence of antimonial silver-ores, in association with strata, carrying beds of bituminous coal, in the mineral caves of Huallanca, Peru, located at an elevation of 14,700 ft. above the sea. These silver-mines are situated in a coal-formation, upturned on edge by an outburst of porphyry, the upheaval forming immense backbones, with the stratification standing almost perpendicular. A bed of coal is mined for blacksmithing purposes within a distance of 150 yards of the ore-bearing beds. The ore is tetrahedrite, with about 800 ounces of silver per ton, and occurs lining caverns, in beds of sandstone. Some of these caverns are 25 to 30 ft. long and of nearly equal height, their inner surfaces covered with a coating 2 to 3 in. thick of crystallized silver-ores, mostly tetrahedrite. Silver-ores also occur in the shale beds adjacent to the sandstone.