RECENT MINING DECISIONS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 10, 12 January 1870, Page 4

RECENT MINING DECISIONS.

Mr "Warden Pyke established some very judicious regulations at last Wednesday's sitting of the Warden's Court. First, ho required that applicants seeking to procure protection certificates should post up notices of the same. Water-rights are very valuable, and we do not see why a person so requiring to leave his r?ice and water unused should not give something like public notice to those in the locality. Another one was in reference to the transfer of shares, which are to bo made in more regular form than hitherto, no record to be taken of transfers of parts of shares. The necessity for something like a more regular system has been shown by the way some of these, transfers or sales have been brought before the Court. The trans- ! fer of shares in prospecting claims also elicited, and justly so, stroug comments from the Warden. Several applications were put in for transfers of shares sold in this class of claims, and none of which had yet been granted as having been pi-oved to contain the reefs severally alleged. It is just possible that they may be refused, for the applicants had ninety days granted in which to test them. If they don't so test or prove them, the application for so large a sized claim is a fraud. The Court, then, in our opinion, was quite right to refuse these transfei s, for that action would vitiate all sound principles connected with the granting of prospecting claims. No doubt the larger area of ground likely to be granted was one of the influences used in the sale of these shares. What is really required is not the sale of such interests i for large or small sums, but the effective prospecting of these claims. They are protected for ninety days, and four men only need test them. They stand on quite a different footing from the ordinary claim, as a double size of ground is granted to them. Another matter in which the Court defined a system was the renewal of the protection certificates to quartzclaims when the protection term has expired, allowing only two men to be engaged. As remarked by the Warden, many of these protection certificates had been granted on an illegal basis, and any person requiring the extension of that protection term will have to make his applications afresh, and give proper notices. Indeed, we do not see why these should not be advertised. Altogether, the sitting will have the effect of tending to put matters upon a better basis, and define with greater precision the line of action to pursue in theseahdsimilar matters. **P - •-* .: Z...,„ if .„