MINING NOTES.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5277, 16 December 1885, Page 1

MINING NOTES.

Mr Malfroy, a well known inventor and mining expert in the South Island, has devised a new machine for crushing oement, which has been examined by a number c£ tit catted parties who highly approve ot it. An estimate of the cost of the machine, has not yet been prepared, but roughly it is set down at something between £800 and £1000. The machine is on the principle of a stone-crasher, combined with a set of rollers, which effectively pulverise the cement paisiog through the jaws of the crasher. The inventor claims for the machine that it will reduce folly 60 ton* of cement an hour; and that it will only require one man to look after it to see that it is kept going properly. ■. ;' The N.S. W. Gojer.nme.n.thave, pur?, chased some very rich gold specimens from the owners of the Mother' Sbipton claim, in which they were found at Temora, for the purpose of exhibiting them at the approaching Indian and Colooial Exhibition. The largest of the three weighs 360 ounces, of which 258. ounces are pure gold. It is, as will be imagined, one of the finest specimens of gold in quartz, ever discovered in the Australasian colonies. The second specimen, which was once a part of the first, having, we believe, accidentally been broken off from it, has a much larger proportion of quartz, and contains 42 ounces of gold. The third specimen is almost semicircular in shape, and though small, consists almost entirely of gold, which weighs about 11 ounce*. Altogether the three specimens contain 3050zs of solid gold, of so pure a character that it is valued at about £4 an ounce, £1233 having been paid by the Government for the whole of the gold in the stones. It ii proposed to exhibit them in a handsomely fitted case containing other specimens of the mineral wealth cf New South Wales, the richest of the stones occupying the apex of the exhibit, which, when ready, will be handed over to the New South Wales Commission to be forwarded to London.

It is said that some welUainkers at Mitchelstown, a suburb of Wellington, have struck an auriferous quartz reef in which specks of gold are visible, and that a new reef has been struck at Terawhiti 110 feet below the surface. Reports of various " prospects "are coming in from several out-districts.