198 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS METALS, &c
pounds
weight of gold is annually obtained in Lusitania, Gallicia, and Asturia
; Asturia supplying the largest proportion. In no other part of the
world has the same productiveness lasted during so many centuries.*
"
We have already mentioned that gold-mining in Italy is prohibited by an
old-standing decree of the Senate, else no country would have been more
productive in this as it is in other riches. An ordinance of
the Censors is extant, prohibiting the contractors from keeping above
5000 labourers employed in the gold-mines of Victumulae, in the
territory of Vercelli." This territory is now the Vallanzasca, where
five mines have been worked, some with very large returns, from
different periods in the last century. Although picked specimens from
the Aquavite workings yield at the rate of 50-1/2 oz. to the ton, yet
the regular average of the richest of the five, the Peschiera, does not
exceed the rate of three. These mines have just been taken and
consolidated by an Anglo-Italian Company, which holds out to its
shareholders the most flattering prospect (or, at any rate, prospectus) of enormous proceeds from the improved system of working proposed to be introduced.
Mining was prohibited as injurious to agriculture (which the Senate, and later the good Emperors,
endeavoured to promote in Italy by all the means in their power),
because it absorbed the labour that otherwise would have been employed
upon the land. This prohibition extended to
