A gentleman asked the weight of the heaviest portion of the machinery ?
Mr. C. J. Harvey : The weight of the heaviest portion is 2 tons. The weight of each stamp is 8J cwts.
In answer to a question as to what "free gold" is.
Mr.
C. J. Harvey said that free gold is what would be obtained if they
pounded a sample of quartz and then washed it, when they would obtain
the free gold. The pyrites in gold passed through the mercury, but were
saved by the concentrating buddies, where they retained the sulphides
containing the gold.
The Chairman : Do you put quicksilver in the stamp-boxes ?
Mr. C. J. Harvey : No.
The
Chairman said he was sure he should only be expressing the wishes of
the gentlemen present in thanking Mr. Harvey for the lucid and-
interesting lecture which he had given. The subject was one which was
very interesting at the present moment to a great number of Englishmen
and, also English women. The success of many new mines depended upon
the cost with which the ore taken out could be reduced, and the
percentage of gold which could be got from the matrix. Th^re were many
mines working at a profit with only 4 dwts. to the ton, so it would be
seen that the success of a mine would often depend upon getting the
largest possible proportion of gold from the ore. Mr. Harvey's system
differed from that with which he was acquainted, more particularly in
having no copper plates over which the stuff passed after leaving the
stamps, and it also differed in not putting quicksilver in the copper
box and mixing it with a certain proportion of quicksilver. With those
exceptions he believed Mr. Harvey's model was similar to the mills in
common use in California.
The vote of thanks was carried by acclamation, and Mr. Harvey acknowledged the compliment.
On
the motion of Mr. II. Tolputt, a cordial vote of thanks was passed to
the Chairman for his able and courteous conduct in the chair, and the
meeting broke up.
It
may be added that there was a very numerous attendance, and amongst
those present were very many gentlemen who have taken a leading part in
the proportion of mining enterprise in the Wynaad and Mysore districts
of India.— The Financier.
JEWELLERY IX INDIA.
It
is comforting to find a portion of the Native Press of India attacking
the Native tendency to convert gold into jewellery, and thus to hoard
it and render it unproductive; but the comfort is somewhat mitigated
when we find the advantages of the system overstated, and its
disadvantages, or the advantages of the opposite course, of employing
the gold in useful and productive works, understated. Thus, one of the
arguments for the making of jewellery is that "it can always be pledged
or disposed of. The market for its sale is never closed and never
depressed." What a very dangerous fallacy this is appeared with most
painful distinctness during the last great famine. So universal was the
want of food that often the only purchasers that could be found for
jewels were the extortionate and iron-hearted money lenders or grain
merchants. Not only did jewellery fall in value in common with coin—for
the precious metals in every form lost very much of their purchasing
power—but in relation to money itself jewels sank in many places to
less* than a fourth of their value, and in some to an eighth of the
same. Gold—in say nothing of silver—in the form of jewellery was very
little in demand. The principal wearers of them, women and children,
were dying off; so that much of the jewellery became useless for
purposes of wear. And there was no marrying or giving in marriage;
there were no festivities. In the years of the country's direst need
gold as jewellery sank to between a fourth and eighth of its
