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the company sold the mine to the present proprietors, who continued the tunnel and struck the reef; but they have to drive another 60ft. before they are under the winze where good gold was formerly obtained. About 3ft. wide of this reef is highly impregnated with galena, and the other 3ft. is free milling-ore. The assays from the galena portion of the lode, when picked, show 40 per cent, of lead, 2oz. of gold, and 4oz. of silver to the ton. A quantity of this ore is now being broken out and picked, with the intention of forwarding it to America for treatment. Messrs. Firth and Clarke carry on their mining operations principally by contract: they pay the miners from 7s. to 12s. per truck of 1} tons for getting the quartz and taking it to the tramwayhoppers ; they also pay 4s. 6d. per truck for conveying it on the inclines and tramway to the battery. They have forty-two men employed about their mines, and sixteen men at the crushingbattery and tramway. These gentlemen are now making an application for a special claim on the southern end of the Buck Eeef, with the view of floating a large company in England; and from the returns obtained from this reef in the New Find and Colonist Mines there is a good prospect of striking good shots of gold in different portions of this reef. The whole of this reef, wherever it has been tested, will yield from sdwt. to 7dwt. of gold per ton ; but this is too poor to pay for working. However, when the whole of this large reef is auriferous, it is well worthy of being properly tested, as this may be the means of rich discoveries being made. To sum up the whole, the proposed project has a reasonable chance of success. The crushing-battery, which consists of forty-one heads of stamps, as well as a large tailings-plant of berdans, is kept at work for eight hours per day. The tailings, after being treated on the quicksilver- and blanket-tables, are carried away in a chute to the tailings-plant, and treated a second time. From what I could learn from the manager (Mr. Adams), about one-quarter of the bullion in the ore comes from the tailings-plant. In connection with the crushing-battery a small reverberatory furnace has been erected to treat samples of the ore by roasting. The experiments made with this furnace prove conclusively that in order to treat the different ores successfully a roasting-furnace is indispensable, as any ores containing tellurides, sulphides, and arsenicides carry away gold and silver unless they are got clear off before commencing to collect the metals the ore contains. I have been trying to impress this on the miners for several years, and now look forward with pleasure to the time when a better system of treating ores is likely to be adopted. Plans of a White-Howell furnace have been made, and the manager informed me that this will be ordered from America at once, and erected near the crushingbattery. New Era Company, Wcdorongomai, Auckland. —This was formerly a crushing-battery company, but after the crushing-battery was erected the company found no support from the claim-holders, consequently only about 200 tons is all the quartz that has yet been treated at these works. As a description of this plant, with drawings, is given further on, it is needless to refer to it here, but merely to give a sketch of the steps taken by the proprietors to utilize the plant that has been erected at a considerable expense. The claims that this plant depended on for quartz to crush have been abandoned one after another, and the New Era Company have applied for a special claim, comprising the Premier and other mines, with the view of floating a large company in the English market to work the ground in connection with the battery. Mr. Fraser, of the foundry, Auckland, one of the principal proprietors of this crushing-plant, finding that it would not realize the expectations formed with regard to successfully treating the ore, began to make experiments with a small testing-plant he erected at his foundry for the purpose of perfecting the large plant that was erected here. With this testing-plant he has been very successful in treating samples of different ores that he could obtain from every part of the district. Indeed, so successful has he been in the treatment that it is looked on as a great favour, besides payment, to get him to test samples of two tons or so from the different mines which contain refractory ores. The principle on which he conducts the treatment is by first crushing the ore dry, then roasting it in a reverberatory furnace, which, with the addition of salt at a proper stage of roasting, converts the sulphates formed from sulphides into chlorides, and makes the ore suitable for either amalgamation with the pan-process or ready for chlorination and leaching. The reverberatory furnace which he is erecting is too small to treat a large quantity of ore, and he now proposes to erect a testing-plant at the Thames whereby he can treat, say, forty tons of ore per week. The roasting-furnace he proposes to erect is somewhat on the White-Howell principle, being about the same length and diameter, with a rotary movement; only, instead of having a smooth lining of fire-brick inside, he proposes to have a certain number of the ends of the bricks projecting, to form a kind of screw-motion, thereby preventing the material from getting too fast down to the lower end. He also advocates that these projections will cause better disintegration of the material in the furnace, consequently will cause it to be more perfectly roasted. The New Era Company, having watched with interest the experiments made by Mr. Fraser at the testing-plant at his foundry, and the successful issue of treating the various samples of ore, intend to make such alterations and improvements in their crushing-plant before they commence crushing-operations again, that they can treat the ores in a somewhat similar manner to that adopted by Mr. Fraser. The Te Aroha Goldfield at the present time is in a very low state. Most of the mines that were originally taken up have changed hands or have been abandoned; but there is little doubt that the whole of the ground will yet be worked when a better method of treating the ores is adopted. Neiu Discovery at Waihou. —A new discovery has lately been made on Mr. J. B. Smith's property at Waihou. It is situated between the Waihou or Thames Eiver and the Waitoa Eiver, about four miles distant in a westerly direction from Waiorongomai. The whole of the country forms a large plain for, say, eight or ten miles wide and for over thirty miles in length, which has been covered at different periods with volcanic mud, somewhat similar to the mud ejected from the