Butt Township, Nipissing District, Ontario, Canadai

Regional Level Types
Butt Township	Township
Nipissing District	District
Ontario	Province
Canada	Country

"A New Discovery of Pitchblende.
The European supply of radium is in the main obtained from pitchblende.
The following note by C.W. Knight on a discovery of this mineral in Nipissing district will therefore be of interest:—

It having Been reported to the Ontario Bureau of Mines that pitchblende,
extraordinarily rich in radium, had been discovered in Butt township, east of the Georgian Bay, in the Province of Ontario, the writer was instructed to visit the area and make a preliminary examination. Accordingly, two days early in October, 1919, were spent in this township, and one or two ounces of pitchblende were collected.

The mineral was identified and found to be pitchblende by W.K. McNeill,
Provincial Assayer for the Province of Ontario. He also found that it was strongly radio-active.

Butt township is entered by way of Kearney, a town on the Grand Trunk
railway, 167 miles by rail north of Toronto, and 6 miles east of Scotia Junction. The deposit of pitchblende is 22 miles north-eastward from Kearney. A wagon road leads to within 4 miles of the occurrence, and the last 4 miles must be travelled on foot. It may be added that teams, wagons and supplies are obtainable at Kearney for those who desire to visit the area. Hotel accommodation is available at Scotia Junction and Kearney.

The country along the wagon road into the deposit is for the most part rugged, particularly in Butt township. The hills rise two or three hundred feet or more above the valleys, the latter being filled with sand and gravel. In that part of the township in which the pitchblende occurs the rock? are largely covered with drift, making prospecting difficult. Mica has been mined in a small way in this part of the country, on and off, for years.

The pitchblende occurs, sparingly in a coarse, granite pegmatite diks, striking north 25 degrees east, and dipping at about 60 degrees to the northwest. The dike has been worked by an open cut about 40 feet long, and 7 or 8 feet deep. It occurs at tbe edge of a small lake, locally known as Mica lake, on lot 13 in the sixth and seventh concessions of Butt township. The lake has been partly drained in order to prevent the pit being flooded during mining operations.

The width of the dike is not known, since only the footwall has been exposed by the pit, but it appears to be-at least 3 or 4 feet-wide. The length of the dike is also not known, the surface being covered with drift; the open cut shows it to have a length of at least 40 feet.

The dike consists of white feldspar, re;l feldspar, white quartz, smoky quartz, white mica, black mica, a little tourmaline, pitchblende, and other minerals in small quantity, which have not as yet been identified, but which are being investigated by the Ontario Bureau of Mines.

The pitchblende appears to be associated with the red feldspar, in which
respect it resembles the occurrence of euxenite, a radium-bearing mineral, in Lanark county, Ontario, described in the 26th Annual Report of the Bureau of Mines, 1917."

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