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and wagon loads will be driven to the furnace from all directions. It is said that recent improvements will reduce the expense of smelting, copper ore more than one-half. What was formerly a difficult work is now said to be simple and easy. Let this be as it may, more money can be realized from the working of the ore into copper at home than by taking he ore north to be smelted. Manufactured in Texas, it would aid in the settlement of the copper region, which is also a fine a agricultural country, and then the frontier protection now required would not be needed.

COPPER OF LLANO COUNTY .

On the Little Llano, near the northern boundary of the county, are some large veins of ore, containing a large per cent of copper. These veins are, some of them, from two to three feet thick in granites, and. their associated crystalline rocks also. The veins extend into the metamorphic rocks, gneiss and mica schist. Surface specimens show a large per cent. of iron mixed with the copper. It may be that downwards the ore will contain a larger per cent. of copper than is now given.

A few miles west of this copper, ore of a similar character has been found in veins. A Mr. Tharp has been mining for silver and copper during the present season at a place near his house, about four miles west of Packsaddle Mountain. If I has found some fine specimens of blue copper, but had not, at .time of our visit (October) succeeded in finding a true vein. He is working in feldspathic granites, composed mostly of feldspar, considerable quartz, and bolt little mica. On the surface, near the road front Llano to , the cove of Honey Creek, about three miles from the latter place, I saw specimens of copper ore, to which my attention was called by Dr. C. S. Smith, of Llano. These were on the surface of the metamorphic mica schists, acid if a true vein is there, it will probably prove to be very valuable.

In the State Cabinet are specimens of copper ore which are said to have been obtained from near Eagle Pass.

The copper ores of Texas give promise to be next in value to its deposits of iron and coal. Westward and southwestward from the present known copper region, there are probably richer beds and veins than any yet known. Such are the geological indications.

Last winter Dr. Beaumont, of the State Department,