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This mineral occurs in various parts of the world, and in rocks
of different formation. In this island it has been discovered in
Invernesshire, in gneiss, which is considered as one of the
primitive rocks; there it appears to be intermixed with a
micaceous substance and other hard mineral bodies which render it
unfit for pencils. In the borders of Ayrshire, it is found in the
neighbourhood of coal, to which it seems too nearly allied: but
in no place has it been met with equal in purity to that produced
from Borrowdale, in Cumberland, where it lies in a rock of
intermediate formation.
We have no account of the first discovery, or opening of this
mine; but from a conveyance made in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, it appears to have been known before that
time. The manor of Borrowdale is said to have belonged to the
Abbey of Furness; and having at the dissolution of that
monastery, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, fallen to the Crown,
it was granted by James the First to William Whitmore and Jonas
Verdon, including and particularizing among other things, 'the
wad-holes and wad, commonly called
black-cawke, within the commons of Seatoller, or elsewhere
within any of the wastes or commons of the said manor, now or
late in the tenure or occupation of Roger Robinson, or his
assigns, by the particulars thereof mentioned to be of the yearly
rent or value of fifteen shillings and fourpence.' By a
deed bearing date the twenty-eighth day of November,
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