MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 334, 28 July 1849, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

How to Enlarge Veqetablks. — A vast increase of food may be obtained by managing judiciously, and systematically carrjing out for a time the principles of increase. Take, for instance, a pea. Plant it in very ' rich ground ; allow it to bear, the first year, say half-a-dozen pods only ; remove all others save the largest siugle pea of these. Sow it the next year, and retain of the produce three podi only ; sow the largest the following year, and retain one pod ; a^ain select the largest, and the next year the sort will by this time have trebled its eiz3 and weight. Ever afterwards now the largest seed; and by these means you will get peas, or anything else, of a bulk of which we at present have no conception.— Boston Cultivator (U.S), Gold Production. — The Mining Journal has the following remarks on the subject of gold production, respecting which much popular error prevails :— t€ There is no such thing as " gold ore," properly speakiug. The term " ore" is understood by metals in a mineralized condition from chemical contact with some of the more generally diffused acids, oxygen, &c. — such as sulphuret, carbonnto, or oxides of copper, Bulphurct of iron, rueicury, lead, &c. These are almost uniformly found in cracks or fissures in the primitive formations— granite, clay 6late, &c, running north and south, diverging but little from the magnetic meru dian, and at right angles thereto, or east and west ; which fis-ure* have, no doubt, been filled, and are continually filling, with mineralised matter from the effects of galvanic action. Gold is always found in its pure and native state ; and however hard the enveloping matrix, and however impalpably fine the grains of the precious metal may be,i. is found only in mechanical admixture, and is to be separated by stamping and washing. In the case of California, it doubtless exists in the extensive granite ranges which run through that country, anil which, becoming disintegrated by the action of the atmosphere and the rains, the grams of gold, with the detiitus, are wushed down into the pluim. Mauy centuries must have elapsed to have formed the immense deposits we heur of.