1896.] Is it Jennie ? Is it Susie? Rita, Josephine or Nell ? Never mind, I love her madly, I remember that quite well. But,—the dickens I—what her name was, I'll be blest if I can tell I A VALUABLE DISCOVERY. The daily papers are announcing the fact of a valuable dis covery of phosphate rock in Juniata county, Pa., which may prove to be of commercial value. This deposit was recently ex plored by Professor Ihlseng at the instigation of the Agricultural Experiment Station of the College, which had previously been in receipt of numerous specimens of the rock analyzing from twenty to thirty per cent. of phosphoric acid. The deposit lies between the Oriskany flint and the Onondaga limestone, and though pockety may prove on further examination to be in one continuous stratum along this crucial horizon between the Silurian and Devonian formations. A bulletin will shortly be issued by the Experiment Station and further investigation may be entered upon later in the season. The phosphatic material assumes two forms—red nodules or pebbles and white rock. This discovery is of considerable importance since the thickness of the phosphate bearing mass seems to reach several feet and the contents are rich enough in the equivalent of bone phosphate to warrant extraction and shipment a moderate distance. Again, the geologic and topographic features of several of the central counties of our State are equally favorable for the occurrence of similar super ficial deposits. If the entire of the r, roo miles of Oriskany out crop in this State is phosphate bearing to a commercial degree then will a very important industry have been established. At present, three-fourths of the world's consumption of mineral manure comes from the Southern States, though it is of a higher grade than any yet discovered in Juniata county; nevertheless the fertilizing power of the latter and the accessibility of the deposit will enable the local producers to compete with the former in Pennsylvania at the present prices. The prospect is, however, as eccentric as is the general run of such deposits. Its origin is doubtless the same as that of similar ablation products and is the result of a weathering process wherin acidulated meteoric waters having dissolved the earthy phospate from one rich stratum deposited it in another rock below through which they had percolated by a mutual chemical reaction with a more soluble constituent of the latter rock. The phosphatic pebble or nodules have been saturated by the solution. A Valuable Discovery. —Columbia Spec/atop
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers