GOLD SAVING APPARATUS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 176, 19 July 1872, Page 511

GOLD SAVING APPARATUS.

The * Grey River Argus * says : Y "We have had the opportunity of inspecting the plan of an apparatus invented by Mr. Crossley, now of this town, which seems highly necessary for adoption by the mining companies who are crushing or about to crush at the reefs. In its very simplicity its excellence is constituted, as it neither requires extra gear or runs any danger of breakage or stoppage to the works by getting out of order. It is simply a patent ripple wherein the quicksilver is made to act as wanted, despite of cold or atmospheric influences. As it is well known that mercury at lSdeg. below zero freezes harder "than solid iron, and cannot act as a recipient of gold, and then also contracts to onethird of its dimensions when active and we'll disposed, we can easily imagine that any means that can remedy such inactivity in this most necessary aid to gold saving mus't be-of great"impor-' tance to the district. Such a want Mr Crossley's - rip pie professes |to meet. This plan has been successfully adopted at Wood's Point, where the atmospheric influence exercises such a depression upon the mercury as to render it almost totally inactive. The same affair was experienced upon some of the claims on the Thames, and it was not until Mr. Crossley's apparatus was brought into use that the real value of the stone was known. The deterrent influences that operated against the true testing and amalgamation of the quartz, gold, and. quicksilver in* both these places are much in excess in the Reefton district, inasmuch as the cold is greater and the humidity is more> We also know from specimens shown, that gold of a very fine floury nature lSvobtained in.many of the claims, and when such is the case, unless it is caught by some very strong and powerful Recipient, the merest trickle of water will carry it away. In the design we have mentioned all such difficulties are met by merely being, able to keep up a requisite temperature of such a heat as,to enable the mercury to act as wanlted. The ripples are kept in a continual state of agitation during the crushing, and receive all the.matrix into a 9in. trough, through which the mercury is at times running. Attached to ! this is a pipe which receives a continual supply of steam, which through the three or four troughs That may constitute the apparatus. Along with this are other appliances of a substantial nature that act in conjunction to keep the mercury alive, while attached to them are the usual boxes and plates in ordinary use. It has, however, been proved in every case where these ripples have been tried that from ninety-five to ninetyeight per cent, of the gold produced has been got in them, and this result has been when there have been silvered plates, blankets, and plu*h used in long fluming to catch what might have been missed in the first instance. In crushing by this process, as we have already observed, cold and like deterring influences upon the mercury are combatted, and we should therefore t.eleonie the introduction of such an idea as Mr. Crossley has invented. It is simplicity itself, and when once looked at by experienced minors, it will, in our opinion, be immediately adopted.