GOLD SAYING APPLIANCES.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 11 December 1901, Page 4

GOLD SAYING APPLIANCES.

To all appearance the day is not far distant when it will be found possible to redeem the gold deposits in the auriferous sands of our ocean beaches. According to the Mining and Scientific Press of San Francisco, Mr P. M. Johnston has invented an appliance for the reclamation of fine gold such as is found on the beacheß of the West Coast. The process appears very simple and inexpensive, the patent has been purchased by the Bose Gold-reclamation Company, California, and they claim that the appliance saves the gold at no greater cost than the ordinary expense involved in getting the sand and water into an ordinary sluice box, that it does its work effectively and that it is the application of a principal, whose simplicity causes wonder, that it was not long ago discovered. The exterior of the invention shows a box of the ordinary sluicing pattern, built of lin boards, 12ft in length, 12in in width, and Sin depth. The interior designed to save the gold is a matter of arrangemont rather than of material, the cost of the latter is given at under seven shillings. The most astonishing part of the invention is that neither plates, mercury nor magnets are used. The owners of the patent further state that two or three tons of sand per hour were run through one of these appliances day after day consecutively, during a trial test of about thirty days upon the beach sands, near Santa Cruz, California, and that all of the gold and platinum carried by the rands was reclaimed and saved, and that the gold saved in this test run averaged 400 colours of gold to the cent, in value. They also say that these boxes may be placed in batteries of five, ten, twenty, or more, up to any number desired, and the sand and water may be put into them either by hand or with mechanical appliances, no further expense in operation being required; and they may also be used as an adjunct to ordinary Bluicing or hydraulicing operations, with the result of saving the values in fine gold contained in the sand concentrates, which are otherwise lost. The new invention claims a working capacity of 500 to 3,000 cubic yards per day, and that deposits of auriferous sands carry values in gold so low that they have been considered worthless, may now be worked with satisfactory results. A chance is therefore open for some enterprising miner to speculate with the object of securing a right form, the Bose Uold-reclamation company of San Francisco, to use their invention in New Zealand.