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Since the whole Cape is composed of granite hills and ledges, streaked with trap, blotched with porphyry and quartz, and overstrewn with boulders, the mineralogists have here a rare field. They pierce and rive the huge and grand forms, to obtain the more precious minute ones within them. They get the purest quartz crystals from the solid heart of the quarry, and moon-stones from narrow crevices downward thirty feet from the top of the ledge. They have found on the Cape specimens of more than thirty classes of minerals, three of which have been discovered nowhere else. Incited

by the ever visible hints of the various substances which are secreted in the ledges, blocks of granite, and boulders and pebbles around them, they advance from the first steps of their study and search, until by means of correspondence and exchange they bring together specimens of minerals from all parts of the earth.

There are two valuable private cabinets of minerals in our own town. One of these, containing over two thousand specimens, belongs to Dr. Edward Barden, son of the late Rev. Stillman Barden; the other, containing thirteen hundred specimens, is the property of Mr. William J. Knowlton.

Mr. Barden, while faithful in the sphere of clerical duty, added to his fund of inward wealth, and extended the range of his usefulness, by walking forth frequently in close companionship with Nature, finding sermons of deep meaning and brilliant expression in her stones.

Young men looking for employment and pleasure above the plane of idleness and frivolity, following the lessons and example of this enthusiastic clergyman, rising every year in the ascending road of science, soon ascertained such employment and pleasure to have been always nearer to them than they had supposed.

Mr. Knowlton has been to the pains of furnishing, for the gratification of such as are interested in mineralogy, the following

LIST OF MINERALS WHICH HAVE BEEN FOUND ON CAPE ANN.

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A spring of Chalybeate Water was discovered near the termination of Andrews' Point in the summer of 1872. The following is the State Assayer's testimony as to its composition and qualities:

STATE ASSAYER'S OFFICE,
BOSTON, Sept. 5, 1872.

I have made a chemical analysis of the water from the Springs at Ocean View, Pigeon Cove, Mass., and find that one imperial gallon (ten pounds of it) yields one hundred and twenty-eight grains of solid matters, of which the most important is Oxide of Iron, which exists as a Carbonate, and Sulphate of Iron.

The Oxide of Iron in a gallon of water weighs twenty-four grains. The other matters are Sulphate of Soda, Chlorides of Sodium and Caicium. The water is a true Chalybeate Mineral Water, having decided tonic properties.

C. T. JACKSON, M.D.,
State Assayer.

SEA-ANIMALS, SEA-WEEDS, AND SEA-MOSSES.

HALIBUT POINT.

The wonders of the sea are beyond computation. At whatever point approached, they more and more unveil to the vision. Though the curious, searching for them, never look farther over the lowest tide-line than they can see, they walk to and fro on the granite stairs slanting into the ocean as on the border of a broad demesne of forest, pasture, field, and garden, adorned with all manner of vegetation, from minute and delicate plants, rivalling the most frail and tender flowers on the land, to the rankest and tallest growths, swayed by the tides, as are the trees and shrubs on the hillsides by the winds; and stocked with creatures innumerable, some of which roam about in quest of food, selecting from time to time new places of rest, others abiding throughout their lifetime on the same spots, thousands of them clinging to the sides of rocks, thousands dwelling within shallow basins on the shore, thousands inhabiting deep and shadowy dens a little removed from the shore.

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