day of on or before the in each year, the sum of, for the claim described in the record, and not exceeding the amount for which a patent may be granted; and in case of such payment the receipt of the collector shall be sufficient proof to the register of the land office: And provided further, That the failure to perforin such labor or to make such payment in lieu thereof, shall not prevent the claimant from making good his title at any time for the purpose of obtaining a patent, by the payment of for each and every year of default, unless the claim shall have been located, recorded, and occupied by other parties during the time of such default. And, in general, every failure to comply with the conditions of this act shall prevent the party so failing to comply from interfering with the rights of other parties, accruing during the period of his default; but any such failure to comply with the conditions of this act may be made good by subsequent compliance therewith so far as the rights of other parties accruing during the period of such failure or default shall allow. SEC. 6. The money received under this act by United States revenue collectors shall be appropriated as follows: per cent. to the collector for his services in collecting the same; one-half of the remainder to the State or territory within which the mining district is situated, as a fund for the maintenance of a mining school, or the execution of geological surveys, for which sum the receipt of the treasurer of the said State or Territory shall be sufficient voucher for the collector. The remainder shall go to the treasury of the United States, and shall be divided into two equal parts; one part to be called the national mining school fund, and devoted to the establishment and maintenance of a national school of mines; and the other part to be called the mining survey fund, and devoted to the promotion of the interests of the mining industry in equalizing the expense of surveys made necessary by this act and the act to which it is amendatory, and in such other ways as Congress shall determine. SEC. 7. All acts or parts of acts inconsistent with this act are hereby repealed. MINERAL DEPOSITS. CHAPTER LX. CLASSIFICATION. The principal useful minerals obtained by mining are gold, silver, platinum, copper, lead, tin, quicksilver, zinc, antimony, bismuth, arsenic, nickel, cobalt, iron, manganese, graphite, anthracite, pit-coal, lignite, bituminous shale, peat, rock-salt, sulphur, alum-slate, barytes, gypsum, cryolite, precious stones, building-stones, and ice. The various liquid mineral products, such as brine, petroleum, and mineral waters, should, perhaps, also be included. The term mineral deposits, though in common use, is not very happily chosen to define bodies of these useful minerals; for, on one hand, every rock is a mineral deposit, and, on the other hand, this name is frequently applied to a particular class of occurrences as distinguished from fissureveins. I retain the phrase, however, in accordance with general usage. Most of the minerals above enumerated are widely disseminated through the solid crust of the earth. It is only those accumulations or concentrations of them which can be practically utilized that receive this name and become the objects of mining. Mineral deposits are classified according to their form, position, and probable origin. The first general distinction is made between exposed or superficial and inclosed or subterranean deposits. Superficial deposits comprise deposits of debris (alluvial or drift deposits formed of the accumulated fragments of older rocks, such as gold and tin placers, gravel and cement mines, &c.) and surface deposits found in situ, (such as bogiron ores, peat moors, salt, soda and saltpeter beds, and the coast depos its of amber. Occasionally a deposit originally inclosed is exposed by erosion of the overlying rocks, as, for instance, the vein of the Red Mountain Company at Silver Peak, Nevada, which is a fissure-vein from which the hanging wall forming the side of a mountain has been almost entirely carried away by disintegration and aqueous action. As this scarcely justifies us in calling such a deposit a superficial one, so, on the other hand, a few feet of overlying soil does not convert a superficial deposit into an inclosed one. The distinction, like others to be hereafter mentioned, is broad and convenient, but not minutely accurate. Inclosed or subterranean deposits comprise three great classes, distinguished, according to their form, as tabular or sheet deposits, mass deposits, and irregular segregations or aggregations. I must repeat that these distinctions are not sharply drawn and at all times to be recognized in practice. The degree to which they are founded in nature will be indicated presently. Under sheet deposits are ranked such as possess two predominant dimensions, while the third, called the thickness, is comparatively small, so that we may speak of them as having a general plane or sheet. It is also understood that the surfaces bounding such a deposit on two sides have a general, though not mathematically exact, parallelism; they constitute its walls or its roof and floor, according to its position. The deposits of this class are divided, according to their nature, into lodes or veins and beds. Mass deposits include both large, irregular masses of valuable minerals and strata of rock impreg nated with valuable mineral or so intersected with a net-work of mineral veins that the whole must be extracted. The German word Stockwerk, applied to this class, and adopted by some American writers, means, literally, story, or story-work, and refers to the manner in which masses are exploited in successive stories, like those of a building. Irregular segregations or aggregations include nests, chambers, pockets, amygdules, and small ore-bodies of every description. They may occur in larger deposits of other classes. Thus, the amygdaloid beds of Lake Superior are sheet deposits, but their copper is often in segregations Pockets and chambers are also common in veins, especially in large veins. The ordinary rock formations, worked by quarrying, and the springs, worked by boring, digging wells, and pumping, I leave out of consideration. Recapitulating this classification of mineral deposits, we have: I. Deposits of debris. II. Surface formations in place. b. Impregnations, &c. III. Other irregular deposits. a. Pockets, &c., distributed in other deposits. This is substantially the classification of Lottner, a late distinguished professor at the Berlin School of Mines. In the small space devoted to this discussion I can only make brief mention of the most important of the above classes, adducing at the same time established American examples, and confining myself principally to the bearings of the subject upon gold and silver mining. CHAPTER LXI. SUPERFICIAL DEPOSITS. These are always of comparatively recent geological formation. The deposits of debris are accumulations of mineral detached from its original localities by disintegrating influences, and conveyed, generally by water, to a new position. They contain, therefore, a great variety of material, from large boulders down to the finest sand or clay, in which the valuable minerals are imbedded. Sometimes these deposits are simply disintegrated-not washed away. They are then to be recognized by their freedom from water-worn particles, sand, &c., their general homogeneous composition, and their position in places where there are otherwise no signs of alluvial action. The most frequent superficial deposits of debris, however, have been accumulated by currents of water. The lighter minerals have been washed away, including all those ores which, by chemical decomposition, assumed forms of |