man's creative acts.

From other of its alloys, knives, axes, swords, and all cutting
implements may receive and hold an edge not surpassed by the best
tempered steel. Hulot, director in the postage stamp department, Paris,
asserts that 120,000 blows will exhaust the usefulness of the cushion of
the stamp machine, and this number of blows is given in a day; and that
when a cushion of aluminum bronze was substituted, it was unaffected
after months of use.

If we have found a metal that possesses both tensile strength and
resistance to compression; malleability and ductility--the quality of
hardening, softening, and toughening by tempering; adaptability to
casting, rolling, or forging; susceptibility to luster and finish; of
complete homogeneous character and unusually resistant to destructive
agents--mankind will certainly leave the present accomplishments as
belonging to an effete past, and, as it were, start anew in a career of
greater prospects.

This important material is to be found largely in nearly all the rocks,
or as Prof. Dana has said, "Nearly all rocks are ore-beds of the metal."
It is in every clay bank. It is particularly abundant in the coal
measures and is incidental to the shales or slates and clays that
underlie the coal. This under clay of the coal stratum was in all
probability the soil out of which grew the vegetation of the coal
deposits. It is a compound of aluminum and other matter, and, when mixed
with carbon and transformed by the processes of geologic action, it
becomes the shale rock which we know and which we discard as worthless
slate. And it is barely possible that we have been and are still carting
to the refuse pile an article more valuable than the so greatly lauded
coal waste or the merchantable coal itself. We have seen that the best
alumina ore contains only fifty-four per cent. of metal.

The following prepared table has been furnished by the courtesy and
kindness of Mr. Alex. H. Sherred, of Scranton.

ALUMINA.

Blue-black shale, Pine Brook drift 27.36
Slate from Briggs' Shaft coal 15.93
Black fire clay, 4 ft. thick, Nos. 4 and 5 Rolling Mill mines 23.53
First cut on railroad, black clay above Rolling Mill 32.60
G vein black clay, Hyde Park mines 28.67

It will be seen that the black clay, shale, or slate, has a constituent
of aluminum of from 15.93 per cent., the low