Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for the extraction of gold, and several attempts have been made to introduce more economical and more efficient means of pulverizing than are afforded by the ordinary stamp batteries. Of a system lately brought into use, Mr. Michel speaks as follows :— " I had occasion, shortly before my visit to Nova Scotia, to see in operation at the Harvey Hill mine, in the province of Quebec, a new system of machinery, which promises to revolutionize the mechanical treatment of auriferous minerals. I speak of the mills of Messrs. Whelpley and Storer, of Boston, which consist of a crusher and a pulverizer, whose construction I shall not attempt to describe, but shall xmly mention the results which I saw. The apparatus at Harvey Hill was arranged for pulverizing the tender copper-bearing slates ofthat locality; but three trials were made in my presence with auriferous quartz from the Chaudière district, each trial upon one-third of a ton. Eighteen minutes were required to reduce one ton of quartz to a coarse powder fit for the pulverizer ; and the latter machine in forty-two minutes reduced the ton of quartz to a powder as fine as that of most of the stamp mills in Nova Scotia. The quartzose copper slates of Leeds were pulverized much more rapidly, and reduced to an impalpable powder ; and I am persuaded of the truth of what I was told by the mecanicien in charge of the mills, that a similar result would have been obtained with the quartz, had the pulverizer been adjusted for the purpose." It is proper in this connection to meation the use of sodium-amalgam in the extraction of gold. It often happens that a portion of the gold in the quartz, from the presence of an enveloping film, or from some other reason not well understood, is not readily moistened by the mercury, and consequently esca...