the intention of the parties would not be accomplished. The deeds are in accordance with the agreement."

The deeds referred to are one from the Eureka to the Richmond, and one from the Richmond to the Eureka. By the former, the Eureka conveyed the Lookout ground, and also all the mining ground lying on the northwesterly side of the line designated, with the ores, precious metals, veins, lodes, ledges, deposits, dips, spurs or angles, on, in, or under the same. By the latter, the Richmond conveyed, with warranty against its own acts, all its right, title, or interest in and to all mining ground situated in the Eureka mining district on the southeasterly side of the designated line, “together with all the dips, spurs, and angles, and also all the metals, ores, gold and silver bearing quartz, rock, and earth therein, and all the rights, privileges, and franchises thereto incident, appendant, and appurtenant, or therewith usually had and enjoyed." The agreement declares it to be "the object and intention of the said parties hereto to confine the workings of the party of the second part (the Richmond) to the northwesterly side of the said line continued downward to the centre of the earth, which line is hereby agreed upon as the permanent boundary-line between the claims of the said parties."

On the issue thus raised, the following observations seem pertinent : 1. The decision of the Court as to the practical unity of the Ruby Hill deposit, involving its legal identity as one lode, covers the whole case, and renders the discussion of the present point unnecessary.

2. The decision of the Court as to the force of the end-lines of a United States patent has the same effect, so far as the claim of the Richmond to the ground in dispute (part of the Potts Chamber) is concerned. The compromise line, W X, was at the same time a patent end-line; and as such it must be, according to the decision, extended indefinitely on the surface, and projected downward in a plane to the centre of the earth, to form the legal boundary. Whether the Eureka, however, could claim the disputed ground under this ruling alone, would depend on its ability to prove that the ore-body of the Potts Chamber was part of a vein having its outcrop or apex within the patented ground of the Eureka.

3. Assuming now, for the sake of the inquiry, that either by a different decision of the Court, or by a different state of the facts, the Eureka could not claim this disputed ground by reason of the unity of the ore-bearing limestone zone, or by reason of any force in patent boundary-lines, we are to look at the compromise alone, and discover

what was its effect. This question, though less extensive and important in its general bearings than others settled by the decision of the Court, involves, nevertheless, an important principle, which may often receive application in mining matters. It will be considered here in its general aspect only; yet the remark seems to be warranted, in passing, that the peculiar circumstances of this case put equity as well as law on the side of the Eureka. The compromise was apparently an attempt to end all possibility of future dispute; and the subsequent denial of its force, to a certain extent, by the Richmond party, seems to be a technical evasion. But it is not necessary to impugn the sincerity of the counsel who, in the discharge of their duty, contended for this, as for every other proposition of law which favored their client.

The decision of the Court was, that the line agreed upon as a boundary between mining claims, must be extended along the dip of the veins. This obviously follows from the nature of such claims. A "claim" upon a vein is not a given surface only; nor is it only a given surface with what underlies it. It includes the right to follow the vein, and the ownership of the contents of the vein, on its dip beyond the surface lines, and between the end-lines. Hence all lines dividing such claims must be extended till they are coterminous with "all that the location on the surface carries," as the Court says, otherwise, they would not serve as boundaries.

It follows from this very reasonable decision, that when two proprietors of adjacent claims agree upon a partition boundary, whether it be a point or a line, the real boundary so fixed is a vertical plane, indefinitely extended so as to divide everything covered by the claims. If a different construction is intended by the parties, then it must be specially expressed.

Thus on every issue raised in the case, the decision was against the Richmond party. The case has been appealed; and the Supreme Court will doubtless be called upon, in course of time, to review the judgments of the Circuit Court, which I have in this paper at some length discussed. That the present analysis of these topics was not postponed until after the hearing of the appeal is due to three reasons. First, there will be a delay of months, perhaps years, in reaching this case on the Supreme Court calendar; secondly, it was necessary, if this paper were to be written at all, that it should be written while the subject-matter was fresh in mind; thirdly, the great interest taken in the late decision by the mining community and the legal fraternity, calls for such a full explanation of its bear

ings as I have tried to furnish; and finally, the defeated party in this lawsuit, and some other parties, including mining journals in England, have indulged in unworthy insinuations as to "American justice," and ascribed the result in this instance to the circumstance that one of the contending parties was a British corporation. This sort of talk might be pertinent to an ordinary trial by jury. Its application to a case so patiently and thoroughly heard, and so convincingly settled by judges of eminence, is preposterous. Apart from the foolish insult which it conveys to men of high character and long experience, it ignores the force of the arguments used in their decision; and the best means of showing its utter baselessness, is a thorough discussion of the points and principles involved in the case so flippantly criticized. This I have attempted to give; and, in the light thus furnished, I think it evident enough that the Court had better reasons for its decision than any mere bias of patriotic feeling.

WHAT IS A PIPE-VEIN?

BY ROSSITER W. RAYMOND, PH.D., NEW YORK CITY.

(Read at the Amenia Meeting, October, 1877.)

THE term "pipe-vein" has recently been applied in this country. to certain deposits of lead ore in magnesian limestone. The use of the term has been twofold. It has been revived as a term found in textbooks on mineral veins, with the implied or declared assertion that the ore-deposits thus named in this country are similar to those which have borne the title abroad. It has also been advanced as an appropriate name for a new class of deposits, even if such a class had not previously been recognized. In either case, the assumption is that pipe-veins form a group or class by themselves, and are not merely interior and subordinate features in larger deposits. The peculiar mining law of the United States, which regards "the vein," whatever that may be, as the basis of title, lends a special interest to these claims. But the object of this paper is rather to discuss the subject from the standpoint of geology and technical literature. I shall briefly answer two questions: (1) What are pipe-veins as described in technical literature? and (2) Is the name appropriate or necessary for a new class of deposits?

The term "pipe-ore," as applied, for instance, to irregular, cylin

drical, sometimes hollow concretions of limonite, etc., probably came from Germany; but "pipe-vein" is of English origin—a miner's term, arising probably, in Staffordshire or Derbyshire. It is worthy of notice that the word "lode," as used by the Cornish and English miners, often carries among them a wider meaning than "vein ;" so that more than one vein may be included in one lode. Thus, in a footnote to Henwood's "Metalliferous Deposits" (Trans. of the Roy. Geol. Soc. of Cornwall, vol. viii, part i, pp. 619, C20), a pipe-vein is mentioned as occurring within a lode of metalliferous limestone.

The first writer, so far as I know, who made a separate class of pipe-veins was Westgarth Foster, who published, early in this century, a work chiefly devoted to a section of the rocks across Great Britain. In this book, he gives a general definition of pipe-veins, and a description of their general appearance. The description has been copied into a number of textbooks without the definition. This is the case, for instance, in Jukes's excellent manual of geology. The reason appears to be that Foster's classification was never generally accepted, and is long since out of date. He was an adherent of the theories of Werner, and his work, however praiseworthy in its time, shared the fate of the system of geology which he had adopted. Sir Henry T. de la Beche, in his Geological Observer, gave, for the first time, a rational classification of the ore-bodies known in Cumberland and Derbyshire as "pipes," "flats," pipes," "flats," "rakes," and "skrins" (Am. ed., 1851, p. 644); and Prof. Bernhard Cotta has quoted (Cotta's Ore Deposits, Prime's transl. p. 431) the description and the diagram of de la Beche. It is noteworthy, however, that Cotta restores the word "vein" in this, connection, which de la Beche had carefully omitted. The language of the latter is signifiHe says:

cant.

"The cavities in that district wherein sulphuret of lead has been discovered are very numerous. When they rise through the beds, they are usually termed pipes, and when interposed between them, flat works. Upon studying the cavities in limestone districts of this character, it will be evident that these distinctions are not always very applicable, and that irregular cavities rising upward may have numerous branches from them, running amid the beds themselves, that joints may cross the cavities and real dislocations traverse the whole."

In other words, the terms pipe and flat are applicable, not to separate classes of deposits, but merely to the forms and positions which may be assumed by different portions of the same deposit. In the diagram and explanation which follow, the author shows how lead ore, introduced into a bed of limestone, may occupy true deep fissures

(rakes), enlarged spaces between the beds (flats), joints contrary to the bedding (skrins), or irregular cavities connected with the rakes, and caused, according to his diagram, by the intersection of these with the planes of the bedding. It is easy to see that along the line of such an intersection, an irregular elongated space might be formed through enlargement by water-currents, attacking the four corners of limestone exposed, and that the disposition of ore in such a space would result in a "pipe," or elongated ore-body, common to, and subordinate to both the rake and the flat. But de la Beche does not call it a pipe-vein. And Cotta says: "It is evident that the whole mass of limestone is traversed, in all accessible fissures and cavities, by ores and vein-stones, which have penetrated subsequent to its formation;" adding, a little further on, "The only veins now generally exploited in Derbyshire, are the rake-veins." This furnishes a striking practical confirmation of de la Beche's explanation. If the pipes are merely subordinate features of the rake-veins, then the working of the latter would be likely to become the main enterprise, and the pipes when encountered and exploited, would be regarded merely as ore-bodies in the veins. To such an extent has this become in fact the case, that Mr. William Wallace, the latest authority on the subject, does not mention pipe-veins at all in bis exhaustive description of the very district which gave the term to technical literature (The Laws which Regulate the Deposition of Lead Ore in Veins; Illustrated by an Examination of the Geological Structure of the Mining District of Alston Moor. By William Wallace. London, 1861). But Plate XVI, of his book (opposite p. 144) presents what is evidently a pipe-namely, an elongated orebody, following the intersection of a vertical vein with a horizontal bedding-plane. It is called, however, not a pipe, but "a rich lead-ore deposit in Handsome Mea great cross vein.”

The mines of Alston Moor were represented at the London Exhibition of 1851, by a most elaborate and beautiful model, exhibiting all their underground works, and giving, as Prof. Whitney remarked, "the features of every part of the district." It has been asserted that this model exhibits the pipe-veins. Fortunately, it is preserved at the Royal School of Mines in London, so that if it could ever throw any light on the question, it can do so at present, as well as in 1851. Not having seen it for nearly twenty years, and not wishing to trust a merely negative memory as to what it exhibits, or to rely upon the fact alone that the description of the model contained in the catalogue of the School of Mines makes no