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CHEMICAL RELATION OF IRON AND MANGANESE.
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  • along the same geologic horizon, and yet in close proximity with each other, the explanation is entirely inadequate, for the deposits are too close to each other to have been formed from different supplies of surface waters.
  • (2) It might be supposed that the iron or the manganese had been leached out of a deposit of the mixed ores, leaving one free from the other and depositing the dissolved ore somewhere else. This explanation, except in special cases, also appears inadequate, because the reagents in surface waters, which dissolve iron and manganese, seem to affect both about equally, so that if one were dissolved, the other should be taken up in the same way. Doubtless small differences could be found in the behavior of the organic and inorganic compounds in surface waters towards iron and manganese minerals, but they would be small as compared with the more active reactions which go on.
  • (3) It might be supposed that a separation could be produced by secondary concentration such as segregation, replacement, etc. This has doubtless sometimes been the case, but where the concentrating action is not assisted by a difference in the chemical behavior of the two substances, the separation would only be on a small scale. Even in the case of concentration by replacement of limestone, if iron and manganese both acted in the same way during the replacement, it would be expected to find them deposited in an intimate mixture. Though this secondary concentration, therefore, unassisted by other agencies, would not produce all the results found in nature, yet, when it is thus assisted, it often plays an important part.
  • (4) The fourth, and what seems the most important, factor in the separation of iron and manganese, is that, though very often they are precipitated in the same form from the same solution, yet sometimes they are precipitated in different forms; and even when precipitated in the same form, the precipitation of one sometimes requires different conditions from the precipitation of the other. This fact will explain the alternate association and separation of iron and manganese, not only when no secondary concentration has gone on, but also in cases where
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