er the sun"; certainly there is
much that is not absolutely new in appliances for gold extraction. I
lately learned that the principle of one of our newest concentrating
machines, the Frue vanner, was known in India and the East centuries
ago; and we have it on good authority--that of Pliny--that gold saving
by amalgamation with mercury was practised before the Christian era.
It will not be surprising then if, ere long, some one claims to have
invented the Korean Mill, with improvements.

Few subjects in mineralogical science have evoked more controversy than
the origin of gold. In the Middle Ages, and, indeed, down to the time
of that great philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton, who was himself bitten
with the craze, it was widely believed that, by what was known as
transmutation, the baser metals might be changed to gold; and much time
and trouble were expended in attempts to make gold--needless to say
without the desired result. Doubtless, however, many valuable additions
to chemical science, and also some useful metallic alloys, were thus
discovered.

The latest startling statement on this subject comes from, of course,
the wonderland of the world, America. In a recently published journal it
is said that a scientific metallurgist there has succeeded in producing
absolutely pure gold, which stands all tests, from silver. Needless
to say, if this were true, at all events the much vexed hi-metallic
question would be solved at once and for all time.

It is now admitted by all specialists that the royal metal, though
differing in material respects in its mode of occurrence from its
useful but more plebeian brethren of the mineral kingdom, has yet been
deposited under similar conditions from mineral salts held in solution.

The first mode of obtaining this much desired metal was doubtless by
washing the sand of rivers which flowed through auriferous strata. Some
of these, such as the Lydian stream, Pactolus, were supposed to renew
their golden stores miraculously each year. What really happened was
that the winter floods detached portions of auriferous drift from the
banks, which, being disintegrated by the rush and flow of the water,
would naturally deposit in the still reaches and eddies any gold that
might be contained therein.

The mode of washing was exactly that carried on by the natives in
some districts of Africa to-day. A wooden bowl was partly filled with
auriferous sand and mud, and, standing knee-deep in the stre