While he admitted the advantages which the companies had for working the ground by means of capital, he did not believe in their finding out anything new in the mode of saving gold. If anything new was to be found, it would be done by individual miners.
Dr. Fischer thought the only sure way of saving the whole of the gold was by the hot-blast process, as it was termed. The speaker then explained, by means of diagrams, the whole process from beginning to end.
Captain Hutton thought the idea of the last speaker, with regard to the zinc plates, was a fallacious one, saying they would stop the very stuff intended to be thrown off the tables. It would be, in his opinion, far better to have what was known as a broken table, with movable copper plates, so that as soon as they were fully charged with amalgam they could be removed and others substituted, which would in many instances effect a large saving of the precious metal. With regard to what had been said, and what was always being said, about new inventions for saving gold, he believed, for his own part, that those machines which had been used in Australia and California were thoroughly good; and it was a mistake to get any on new principles till they had tested the good old ones. Many ingenious inventions had been put forward for saving gold—more inventions than for anything else; but all he could say about most of them was, that they were very much advertised and very little used. With regard to what had been said by Dr. Purchas, the processes he had described were applicable mainly to the saving of silver from ores containing gold, which was very different from the requirements of the Thames. In Victoria, at the starting of the gold fields, the same high charges ruled for crushing as were now paid at the Thames; and the consequence was that only a few claims really paid, whereas, now that the prices were low, 2,000 reefs were worked. In his opinion, to have the thing properly worked, every claim must have its own machine, going night and day, and crush everything before it. Another great drawback was the want of security; and until claims were held on the same kind of leases as other property, no man of sense would put much money in them. But, given these two things—security and machinery—for every claim, and he was convinced that the Thames, for its area, would turn out more gold than any other field yet known; and continue to do so, perhaps, for centuries to come. Speaking of the gold contained in the iron pyrites at the Thames, Captain Hutton said that it would yield from three ounces to thirty ounces to the ton (of pyrites, of course); but that would not pay under the present system. He hoped he would see the day when the whole face of the rock would be taken down, and everything treated properly, either by the roasting system or chlorine, so as to make it all pay; though, no doubt, it would be some time before that would come to pass.
