Show OUR SANDSTONES From the first settlement of these valleys attention has been paid to I our mineral deposits that are useful in building or manufactures At a great expense a railway was made from this city to Red Butte Canyon to bring down sandstone to use in building of the wisdom of thi movement there can be no doubt I and of the perseverance and energy displayed by those engaged in that early work there are standing evidences evi-dences innumerable in this city There are vast deposits of fine red freestone located in that canyon besid s which there are some coarser grained sandrocks composed of particles of silica of the compact variety known as quartzite wliich are used extensively for furnaces on account of their infusibility Sandstones are like the oolites and lime rocks deposited beneath water and made up of materials broken up from otherrocks Hence their diversity diver-sity of appearance and structure A true sandstone consists of small grains compacted or cemented into I a rock In some sandstones there is considerable clay in other kinds lime bounds Some of our limestone lime-stone are largely composed of sands sand-s me have both sand and clay these should be used for making hydraulic cements Some sandstones are ver y harsh and hard these should be use d for mill stones when suitable Millstone Mill-stone grit is a hard rock used for such purposes As to the hard kind of quartzite sandstones many of them are useful for the manufac ture of glass pottery glazes sandpapers sand-papers etc sometimes for sawing other rocks asunder the grit being washed in so as to fall under the saw which is made of plain metal A very fine variety of sandstone known as uN ovaculite is used for making bones compact fine grained sandstones are used as whetstones It would be impossible to mention all the localities where sandstones are found in these valleys they are found from St George where a red sandstone of great beauty is i used for the temple and other buildings to Cache Valley where there are very pretty calcarious sandstones as well as some composed of fine quartz sand In some places very curious kinds of sandstones are found in which fossils may be seen in others mark ings like ferns and moss At Salina Sevier County ganoid fishes are found in the sandstones of the slopes of the quirrh range fishes I have been found embedded At Tooele a pretty photographic rock is found in which the figures resemble re-semble ferns These figures are formed by the infiltration of water containing the oxidea of metals in solution The water is drawn in between layers of sandstone by capil lary attraction whore it spreads out in fanciful shapes like branches of trees hence it is called dendrite which means treelike rock Rock of this kind is found at Cache Valley Val-ley at Uinta and a hundred places in these valleys There are also sandstones found in which the ripple rip-ple mark caused by the moving of the water in which the sand was deposited de-posited may be seen specimens from Rabbit Valley are very curious cu-rious Probably the most singular kind of sandstone found here is that of Silver Reef where the rock really constitutes a silver ore which is mined und worked for that precious metal How the silver came there L not difficult to understand it was deposited from the water of the sea in which the sandstone was laid down By a careful examination of the different kinds of sandstone found at the Silver Reef it may be seen that little fioculent masses of chloride of silver had fallen on the sandstone and being insoluble had remained there There the silver is seen just as it was deposited ages ago in little black specks If we take some sand and stir it up in a tumbler of water let it settle to the bottom then dissolve a little table salt in the water so as to imitate the sea water if a crystal of nitrate ni-trate of siver is broken up and sprinkled in the water flakes of chloride of silver will fall to the bottom and turn black by the action of light just as that salt of silver did when the reefs were formed As to the way in which the silver got into the seawater sea-water the French chemists have proved that all sea water contains silver This metal being soluble in the ocean takes away much of the mystery of the formation of the Silver Reef as the existence of fossil remains of both animals and vegetables found there in great abundance accounts for the formation of nitrogen and other gasses to produce the necessary chemical reactions Horn silver that is what the miners call the tough black chunks of the chloride of silver take a piece of this mineral place it on a clean strip of zinc cover it with clean water press it gently with the blade of a knife and you will see the beau tiful white metal silver Nature by her own simple methods brings out the pure silver by the reaction of the elements and their compounds on each other |