forty-nine cents to the ton,--the oversight and bad economy of its
waste will be sufficiently apparent. It may safely be estimated,
therefore, that the process of Dr. Keith, or some other equally simple
and efficacious method of extracting this hitherto wasted portion of the
precious metal from the accompanying sulphurets, will produce an amount
quite equal, at least, to the previous minimum yield. The effect of such
an increase in the returns will readily be appreciated by others besides
the merely scientific reader.

In regard to the capacity of the various mines for the regular supply of
quartz to the mills, it may be stated that ten tons daily is the average
amount fixed upon, by the different experts, as a reasonable quantity to
be expected from either of the well-conducted properties. Works of
exploration and of "construction", such as will hereafter be pointed
out, must, it is true, always precede those of extraction; but a very
moderate quartz-mill will easily "dress" ten tons of quartz daily, or
three thousand tons per annum, requiring the constant labor of thirty
men, as shown by the large experience already gained throughout the
Province. And this, says Professor Silliman, "is not a very formidable
force for a profitable mine,"--particularly when we consider that the
price of miners' labor in Nova Scotia rarely rises above the moderate
sum of ninety cents per day.

If the quartz cost, to turn its product into gold bars, as high as
twenty dollars a ton, there would be, says the same eminent authority,
"a deduction of one-fourth [as expense] from the gross gold-product. The
gold is about nine-hundred-and-sixty thousandths fine, and is worth, as
already shown, over twenty dollars per ounce. But the cost of the quartz
cannot be so much by one-half as that named above; and there is the
additional value of gold from the pyrites and mispickel, as well as