Bogus Gold.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, 21 February 1890, Page 4

Bogus Gold.

A xo\r. da;/s. siuco a ■ • ■pron>in6rit rparufacturor of gold rings, Julius "7/odislt a, \ve::t to the office of a ■.vei.ncr on John-street, Ne ~r York, to ceo about tho rei ning of come • c .i weeps,, from ilia factory. The reiuier handed him a smnll ingot thai loolced like gold and aslced Him, '■' What is that ■?" Mr Wodiska took ■ap the acid bottle from tho table Reside him and "touched" the yellow surface. The fluid took no effect. Then lie rubbed the. ingot on the stone kept for testing purposes until a good mark was obtained and put the acid on that. " TAVflve-carat gold," he replied dfcidedly as the result of his test. " There is not a grain of gold in the -whole ingot," responded the refined. Mr Wodiska sat down promptly on the neirost stool, and breathed so hard that he got red in the face. He could not believe it. Again he mado the tests ; this time filing into tho ingot for the purpose. The acid made the report as before to his experienced eye, " twelve-3arat gold !" Then the rofmer explained. The ingot had been sent to him lot test by one of his customers, who had been deluded into buying if: and had grown uneasy when thinking how cheaply he had got it from an unknown man, whose anxiety to nffecfc a private sale of it gave at lrast a questionable colour to his vight of possession. The retinov had tried it sufficiently to make sure that it was not gold, and approximately to get at a knowledge of what wore its component metals, but had not yet mado a sufficiently close quantitative analysis to determine their proportions. Ho affirmed that it was a. mixture of platinum, a'mnmum, copper and silver. It would seem that very great difficulties must have been encountered in making such a combination, because of the widely • different melting points of those metals, but ho was sure that those were the constituents of the mass. A piece of the alloy that he had put through the rollers showed' that it worked quite as well a? gold, and was as susceptible of a' high polish. Since then the keeper of a small j«w«llery store on Avenue ,\ has become the unhappy possessor of another ingot of the new alloy. He also bought it from a man who had •vident preferences for strictly private and quick sales, even if he did not get iull gold value, and who volunteered no confidence ns to how he obtained the ingot. It looked to the storekeeper like quite a pretty and profitable transaction until he took his prize to the assayer. !