to from 10″–12″, It is a soft fossil ore and should correspond to one of the Pursley ore beds. The bed is said to have contained in places a band of slate or “Jack” which however did not split the bed, which is said to have furnished a 45 per cent. ore.
The Bird’s Eye fossil ore was once opened well up the south flank of Paddy’s mountain on the west side of Cherry run, where it was found only 8″–10″ thick. Mr. Johnson claims that it showed an entirely different character of ore from that mined in the valley.
The Old Johnson bank, situated about ½ a mile east along the flank of the mountain, is no doubt on the same ore bed although as far as mining was carried on here the entire yield of the bed was an altered brown hematite. The ore was dug from a long open cut some 20′ deep, being found 6′–10′ thick in clays and furnished most of the stock for the old Berlin furnace for many years. Nothing can be seen at the pit now, which is all filled in with clay and sandstone; but from the description given the bed was evidently contained in a local basin, duplicating its thickness for some distance east and west, beyond which it was found much thinner and leaner.
Mr. Johnson reports having opened the same hematite ore further east and immediately north of Kaylor Station. A drift 100′ long has been driven across the measures to the ore which was found 4′ thick, but interleaved with a soapstone slate. It occurs between beds of decomposed slate, without distinct foot or hanging walls, but a fairly regular bed structure.
The old Berlin Iron Works, which was the principal consumer of all the ores mined in this section of the county, have long been dismantled. The furnace stood on the south bank of Penns creek, about 1½ miles south of Laurelton, and was a charcoal plant erected in 1818, since which time it has been operated by several different parties. Their first failure was due to their lack of sufficient power, and their failure to realize the fact that the ores which they proposed to use were cold-short, and were consequently
