The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1895. THE CYANIDE PROCESS.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 82, 3 October 1895, Page 2

The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1895. THE CYANIDE PROCESS.

What the cyanide process consists of is not generally known, says the Napier Telegraph, and a few details in connection with it will doubtless prove of interest to a large number of our readers. Seven years ago the patentees discovered how to get gold out of the matrix into the cyanide solution, but they had not discovered how to economically collect the gold again. Afterwards they discovered a process to collect the gold by the use of zinc in a thread-like condition and at once the invention ireant big fortunes for the patentees. Already £2,000,000 worth of gold has been won by it. And now to shortly describe what the invention consists of. First the ore is crushed, as in the usual methods. Then it is subjected to the action of a weak solution of ordinary cyanide of potassium (usually one part to a hundred and ninety nine parts of water), which percolates through the mass of crushed ore and dissolves out the gold in it. A large proportion of the gold is saved — in some cases 90 per cent — in the solution. This is filtered off in the form of potassic-auro-cyanide, to give it its technical name, and the gold is then chemically precipitated and melted into bullion, There are details in the operation which require that skilled men should perform it, but briefly the process is as we describe it. Should this process be even half as good as stated, there are literally thousands of ounces of gold to be won from the old workings at Okatito, The Five Mile, and Gillespie's on the West Coast of the other Island.