Page:Report on the geology of the four counties, Union, Snyder, Mifflin and Juniata (IA reportongeologyo00dinv).pdf/16

xii F³. (P4) for the names and figures of the animal forms to be found in the formations of the district.

I take the opportunity to warn the citizens of the district reported on in this volume not to throw away their money in mining for gold, silver, copper, lead, zine, bismuth, antimony or tin, for they will never find any workable veins of these metals at depths less than many thousands of feet beneath the surface. The mountains of the district are barren of all precious metals.

With this warning in mind it is well for the people of these counties to know that small deceptive and worthless exhibitions of lead and zinc ores may be expected to present themselves at perhaps more than one point along the very extensive outcrops of the Lewistown or Lower Helderberg limestone formation which are quarried in almost all the forty-seven townships of the four counties; but it is absolutely certain that every dollar spent in trying to open a lead or zine mine at any such point will be thrown away.

It is well to repeat here that the abundance of iron pyrites or “fool’s gold” in the Marcellus shales has deceived many persons and will deceive many more into the belief that these shining little cubical crystals are particles of real gold; whereas they are only a crystallized compound of iron and sulphur, of no value except for the manufacture of vitriol, and then only when they can be mined in large masses cheaply.

Still more earnestly I warn citizens of this district against those who would persuade them to go into boring for oil or gas. No boring for either an oil or a gas well in this district, or in any part of it, will ever be productive. The Venango oil formation and the Bradford oil formation crop out in belts across the district, but they hold neither oil nor gas. The Trenton rocks of Ohio and Indiana underlie the district, but there is no shadow of probability that they hold either oil or gas. Whatever oil and gas may have existed in these formations originally has long ago been evaporated from them; so folded and cracked was this part of the earth’s crust at the rise of the continent at the end of the coal age.

The search for coal will be equally vain. Foolish people