Copperhead

“ The dreaded panther ranges through the primeval, rarely trodden forests; every crevice in the rocks has for tenants rattlesnakes or stealthy copperheads, while long, wonderfully swift "blue racers" haunt the edges of the woods, and linger around the fields to chill his blood who catches a glimpse of their upreared heads, with their great, balefully bright eyes, and "white-collar" encircled throats. ”

“ He told Trout about people he’d heard of in the area who grabbed live copperheads and rattlesnakes during church services, to show how much they believed that Jesus would protect them.
“Takes all kinds of people to make up a world,” said Trout. ”

“ Next to gold, silver, and platinum, copper is the most malleable and ductile of metals; it may be drawn into wires as fine as hair, or beaten into leaves as thin as those of silver. The rust of copper is very poisonous. Copper, mixed with a certain quantity of tin, forms bell-metal. With a smaller proportion, it forms bronze, a substance used in sculpture for casting figures and statues. It is an abundant metal, and is found in various parts of the world. Native oxides of copper are found in Cornwall, Siberia, and in North and South America. ”

“ Copper was shown to exist in all plants which grow on soils of “primary origin” (“roches de la formation primordiale”) , the proportion being sufficient to enable [16] it to be recognised with certainty in one gram of ash, even by means of the ammonia reaction. Samples of white oak from the clay soils, and plants from the dolomitic horizons also gave evidence of copper in one gram of ash, though less was present than in the first case considered, but with plants grown on relatively pure chalk 100 grams of ash had to be examined before copper could be recognised with certainty. ”

“ The richest deposits of native copper are those of Lake Superior, in North America. More frequently and more abundantly it occurs as an ore, e.g. red oxide, black oxide, green carbonate of copper or mal′achite, blue carbonate of copper, vitreous sulphide of copper, purple copper, copper pyrites, or yellow copper ore, with sulphur, antimony, or arsenic, and other metals (true grey copper ore or fah′lerz) , as an impure hydrated silicate (chrys′ocolla) , and as an impure hydrated oxychloride (atac′amite) . The most abundant and important ore is copper pyrites. ”

“ Sometimes native copper, and carbonate of copper, are also present in the same specimen. In some instances, a partial decomposition has taken place, converting its green color into greenish-white, or perfect white, and rendering it so soft as to be cut with a knife. Sometimes the grains or masses of native copper are interspersed among the prehnite, and slender threads of this metal occasionally pass through the aggregated mass of greenstone, prehnite, &c., so that, on breaking it, the fragments are still held together by these metallic fibres. ”

“ Copper may be separated, in a state of great purity, from ANTIMONY, ARSENIC, BISMUTH, LEAD, IRON, TIN, ZINC, &c., as it exists in bell-metal, brass, bronze, gun-metal, mosaic gold, and other commercial alloys, by fusing it in a crucible for about half an hour, along with copper scales (black oxide) and ground bottle-glass, or other like flux. The pure metal is found at the bottom of the crucible, whilst the impurities are either volatilised or dissolved in the flux. The proportions for refining commercial copper are, metal, 10 parts ”

“ A white crystaline stone is also found to contain a great quantity of yellow copper. The lodes of copper ore generally lie deeper than those of tin, and its ores are mostly of the pyritous and sulphurated kinds, with more or less arsenic. “The lodes, both of tin and copper, appear most frequently to have granite for their country, and to make an angle from 60° to 76° with the horizon.” The matrices of copper ore are very numerous. Among the blue ores, there is one of an extremely fine blue earth. ”

“ The copper was, no doubt, recognised as a malleable rock, differing from all others in its ductility, so that it could be fashioned, with the aid of a hammer-stone, to any desired form. By this means the ancient miners of Lake Superior provided themselves with the most suitable tools for their mining operations, and were probably the manufacturers of most of the widely diffused copper implements. But for general purposes, both of industry and war, American man had to be content with the more abundant chert, hornstone, and quartzite. ”

“ Now, we know that copper is found in the mines in a state of such comparative purity as to require very little smelting for the purpose of being brought into a state fit for use, while, on the other hand, iron in its rough state looks more like a stone than a metal, and, moreover, before it can be worked at all, must be subjected to a difficult process of smelting by means of a very powerful fire. If we look at the question only on this side, we are forced to conclude, that copper must have been found and employed before iron. ”

“ The bulk of the work on the relations of copper with the life-processes of plants has dealt with those cases in which the metal has been supplied to the roots in some form or other, and many of the results may be said to apply more strictly to the theoretical, or rather to the purely scientific aspects of the matter, than to the practical everyday life of the community. ”

“ The uses of copper are numerous and important. When rolled into sheets, betwixt large iron cylinders, it is employed for the covering of houses, sheathing the bottoms of ships, and other purposes. As a covering for houses, copper is lighter than slate, but whether it be more durable has not been yet ascertained. The coppering of ships tends to facilitate their progress through the water, by presenting a smoother surface than that of wood, and not permitting shell animals to fasten to it as they do to wood. ”

“ In the reduction of the oxides of this group, no sublimate is visible upon the charcoal.
(a.) Copper (Cu) .—This metal occurs in the metallic state, also as the protoxide, and as oxides combined with acids in different salts (carbonate of copper as malachite, etc.) The sulphide of copper is the principal ore of copper occurring in nature. In the metallic state, copper is of a red color, has great lustre and tenacity, is ductile and malleable, and crystallizes in octahedrons and cubes. It melts at a bright red heat, is more difficult than silver to fuse, but fuses more readily than gold. ”

“ The alloys of copper and tin may be decomposed by dissolving them in an acid, the muriatic for instance, and immersing a sheet of iron, which will precipitate the copper. The tin may then be separated by immersing a plate of lead, or zinc, by either of which metals, it will be precipitated.
Bronze, being a mixed metal, in which the copper forms the principal ingredient, is sometimes used in fire-works, in lieu of copper or brass; for its effects are similar. By the combustion of bronze filings, we have an oxide of copper and an oxide of tin. ”

“ The roasted ore is then smelted to a mixture of copper and iron sulphides, known as copper “matte” or “coarse-metal,” which contains little or no arsenic, antimony or silica. The coarse-metal is now smelted, with coke and siliceous fluxes (in order to slag off the iron) , and the product, consisting of an impure copper sulphide, is variously known as “blue-metal,” when more or less iron is still present, “pimple-metal,” when free copper and more or less copper oxide is present, or “fine” or “white-metal,” which is a fairly pure copper sulphide, containing about 75% of the metal. ”

“ It is then, in his opinion, the solution of the metal—the wear of its surface, by keeping it smooth, which prevents the adhesion of foreign matter. Whenever the copper is unequally worn, deposits will, without doubt, rest in the rough parts, or depressions in the metal, and afford a soil or bed in which sea-weeds can fix their roots, and to which zoophytes and shell-fish can adhere; but there is another cause of foulness on the protected sheathing, arising from the deposit of earthy matter upon the copper, in consequence of its electro-negative condition. ”

“ They do not seem to have understood the art of melting copper, or even of forging it hot, but to have treated it as a kind of malleable stone, which they got in pieces out of the ground, or knocked off from the great natural blocks, and hammered into knives, chisels, axes, and ornaments. The use of native copper was by no means confined to the Mound Builders, for the European explorers found it in use for knives, ice-chisels, ornaments, etc., in the northern part of the Continent, especially among the Esquimaux and the Canadian Indians. ”

“ After taking out a somewhat rumpled shirt, a suit of underclothes and a couple of pair of socks, Prawle said:
“Now, young gents, I’m going to show you some of the finest specimens of real virgin copper ever dug out of mother earth.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Charlie, a slight shade of disappointment in his voice, “I thought it was gold or silver quartz you had there. But copper——”
“Young man,” said Prawle, diving one hairy paw into his grip and fishing out a magnificent specimen of raw copper, “look at that and hold your breath. There is ninety per cent of copper in that hunk. Think of that! ”

“ Copper, as we have seen, occurs in the trappean rocks of Keweenaw and Ontonagon, in masses of many tons weight; and detached blocks of various sizes lie scattered about in the superficial soil or exposed along the lake shore, ready for use without any preparatory skill, or the slightest knowledge of metallurgy. Nature in her own vast crucibles had carried the metal ores through all their preparatory stages, and left them there for man to shape into such forms as his convenience or simplest wants suggested. ”

“ While attending to the active and complicated business of the copper-works, making all the assays of ores, fluxes, furnace slags, and of the crude copper produced, he found time to make many interesting and important metallurgical researches, and many scientific observations and [Pg 41] experiments on the formation of artificial minerals, both in the furnace and in the roasting heaps of copper ores. He produced a new mineral, composed of the sulphurets of zinc and copper, which was found in brilliant black crystals in the roasted ores. ”

“ The pre-Cambrian copper mines of the Lake Superior region are among the richest on the globe. In the igneous rocks copper, next to iron, is the most common of all the useful metals, and it was especially abundant in the Keweenawan lavas. After the Keweenawan was uplifted to form land, percolating waters leached out much of the copper diffused in the lava sheets and deposited it within steam blebs as amygdules of native copper, in cracks and fissures, and especially as a cement, or matrix, in the interbedded gravels which formed the chief aquifers of the region. ”

“ In addition to these masses of native copper, an ore of that metal has long been known to the lake traders as the green rock, in which the characteristic substances are the green and blue carbonates of copper, accompanied by copper black. It is situated upon Keweena Point, 280 miles above the falls of the Ste. Marie. The ore is embraced by what is apparently a recently formed crag; and, although it is of a kind and so situated as to make an imposing appearance, there is little certainty of its existence in large quantities in this formation. ”

“ Near this spot veins of Native Copper may be frequently seen at low water during spring tides, [229] and a mass of this metal was once raised which weighed 104 pounds. Copper is the only metallic substance that has been found in any quantity in the Serpentine formation; and this has never occurred except native, as in the above instance, or in the state of Green Carbonate, so that the mining adventurer need not anticipate much advantage from it. ”

“ In fact we know for certain that such an independent Copper Age was developed not only in the region of the Great Lakes of North America, but also amongst the Bantu peoples of Katanga and other parts of Central Africa. Copper is not an alloy like bronze, but a [Pg 24] soft, easily-worked metal occurring in large quantities and in a tolerably pure state near the surface in many parts of the world. ”

“ The early discovery of iron pyrites and portions of yellow copper ore mingled with a large quantity of blende is considered a favorable omen for copper. Blende, as has already been noted, is by the miner called Black Jack; and ‘Black Jack,’ he says, ‘rides a proud horse,’ a phrase become proverbial, from blende being often found to lie above, in a vein rich in copper beneath. Vast quantities of it were found above the ore in the productive copper mine Huel Towan, as well as in that called North Bennar. The early discovery of lead is also considered a good symptom ”

“ Copper has a brilliant yellowish-red colour, a nauseous, styptic taste, and emits a disagreeable odour when rubbed; is very malleable and ductile; unchanged in dry air; in damp air it soon becomes covered with a greenish rust (carbonate of copper) ; slightly soluble in dilute sulphuric and hydrochloric acid; freely soluble in boiling oil of vitriol (sulphurous anhydride being evolved) ; dilute nitric acid dissolves it readily with copious evolution of nitric oxide; heated to redness in the air, it rapidly becomes covered with a black scale (oxide) ; it fuses at a full red heat ”

“ Veins of copper are also frequently discovered in cliffs that are left bare by the sea, but the most certain sign of a rich ore is an earthy ocherous stone, called Gossan, of a ruddy colour, and crumbles like the rust of iron. Another sign of the presence of copper is, when the ground is inclinable to an easy free working blue Killas, intermixed with white clay. ”