Retort as before described.
This device is my own invention.

The only genuine test after all is the battery, and that, owing to
various causes, is often by no means satisfactory. First, there is a
strong, almost unconquerable temptation to select the stone, thus making
the testing of a few tons give an unduly high average; but more often
the trouble is the other way. The stuff is sent to be treated at some
inefficient battery with worn-out boxes, shaky foundations, and uneven
tables, sometimes with the plates not half amalgamated, or coated with
impurities, the whole concern superintended by a man who knows as little
about the treatment of auriferous quartz by the amalgamating or any
other processes as a dingo does of the differential calculus. Result:
3 dwt. to the ton in the retort, 30 dwt. in the tailings, and a payable
claim declared a "duffer."

When the lode is really rich, particularly if it be carrying coarse
gold, and owing to rough country, or distance, a good battery is not
available, excellent results in a small way may be obtained by the
somewhat laborious, but simple, process of "dollying." A dolly is a
one man power single stamp battery, or rather an extra sized pestle and
mortar (see "Rules of Thumb").

Silver lodes and lodes which frequently carry more or less gold,
are often found beneath the dark ironstone "blows," composed of
conglomerates held together by ferric and manganic oxides; or, where
the ore is galena, the surface indications will frequently be a whitish
limey track sometimes extending for miles, and nodules or "slugs" of
that ore will generally be found on the surface from place to place.
Most silver ores are easily recognisable, and readily tested by means of
the blowpipe or simple fire assay. Sometimes the silver on being tested
is found to contain a considerable percentage of gold as in the great
Comstock lode in Nevada. Ore from the big Broken Hill silver load, New
South Wales, also contains an appreciable quantity of the more precious
metal. A natural alloy of gold containing 20 per cent silver, termed
electrum, is the lowest grade of the noble metal.

Tin, lode, and stream, or alluvial, occurs only as an oxide, termed
cassiterite, and yet you can well appreciate the compliment one Cornish
miner pays to another whose cleverness he wishes to commend, when he
says of him, "Aw, he do know tin," when you look at a representative
collection of tin ores. In various shapes, from sharp-