cious metals, and we may hide our heads in very shame."

All really practical men will, I think, endorse Mr. Rauft's opinion.
Well organised and conducted schools of mines will gradually ameliorate
this unsatisfactory state of things, and I hope before long that we
shall have none but qualified certificated men in our mines. In the
meantime a few practical hints, particularly on that very difficult
branch of the subject, the saving of gold, will, it is hoped, be found
of service.

The extraction of gold from the soil is an industry so old that its
first introduction is lost in the mist of ages. As before stated, gold
is one of the most widely disseminated of the metals, and man, so soon
as he had risen from the lowest forms of savagery, began to be attracted
by the kingly metal, which he found to be easily fashioned into articles
of ornament and use, and to be practically non-corrodable.

What we now term the dish or pan, then, doubtless generally a wooden
bowl, was the appliance first used; but they had also an arrangement,
somewhat like our modern blanket tables, over which the auriferous
sand was passed by means of a stream of water. The sands of some of
the rivers from which portions of the gold supply of the old world was
derived are still washed over year after year in exactly the same manner
as was employed, probably, thousands of years ago, the labour, very
arduous, being often carried on by women, who, standing knee deep in
water, pan off the sand in wooden bowls much as the digger in modern
alluvial fields does with his tin dish. The resulting gold often
consists of but a grain or two of fine dust-gold, which is carefully
collected in quills, and so exported or traded for goods.

The digger of to-day having discovered payable alluvial dirt at such a
depth as to permit of its being profitably worked by small parties of
men with limited or no capital, procures first a half hogshead for a
puddling tub, a "cradle," or "long tom," and tin dish. The "wash dirt,"
as the auriferous drift is usually termed, contains a considerable
admixture of clay of a more or less tenacious character, and the bulk of
this has to be puddled and so disintegrated before the actual separation
of the gold is attempted in the cradle or dish. This is done in the
tub by constantly stirring with a shovel, and changing the water as it
becomes charged with the floating argillaceous, or clayey, particles.
The gravel is then placed in the hopp