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By K. Huessener

This paper attempts a survey of the principles involved in the combustion of blast-furnace gas in boilers and stoves. I do not expect to be able to give much information which is actually new, since the laws and methods of calculation pertaining to this problem are contained in a number of handbooks; but, so far as I am aware, they have nowhere been treated exclusively with reference to this one problem of gas economy. The road which I follow is less that of strictly scientific research than that of the practical engineer, faced by operation problems which require a quick solution by easily accessible means without a prolonged search in scientific handbooks. For this purpose I give a number of tables and diagrams, as well as the results of many years1 practical working experience as combustion engineer, which I trust will prove useful to my readers. HlSTORICAL Considering the tremendous efforts made during the last 15 years to increase the efficiency of all kinds of power plants, it is highly surprising that until a comparatively very recent period, progress in the economical combustion of blast-furnace gas has been so slow, The explanation generally put forth, that fuel has been so cheap that it was hardly worth while to bother about this economy, will not hold good, for the greatest trouble was taken to improve the combustion of coal and to reduce the consumption of steam, The most plausible explanation appears to be the general impression, held as an accepted fact, that gas, especially hot, uncleaned, blast-furnace gas, was not a good boiler fuel. Many managers of high repute had tried unsuccessfully to improve the conditions of its use, and the dictum went forth that efficiencies of over 60 per cent., particularly with high loads, were impossible. This was the situation not only in the United States, with very cheap fuel, but also in Europe, where fuel prices are twice and three times as high.

Jan 1, 1916

By Charles Colcock Jones

In any discussion of this very large subject we are confronted at the outset with so many obstacles that at best only a fragmentary and rather disconnected presentation can be made of it, and my hope is that building from the few facts I have to offer a more complete knowledge may be secured. In the whole intermountain and Pacific Coast region, west of Pueblo, Col., and from Canada to Mexico, there is no production of pig iron, and steel production is confined to the manufacture of a small amount of open-hearth steel from scrap. When we consider the area, the resources, and the several centers of population, this condition seems anomalous, even in the face of every counter argument as to cheap water transportation, or other means of transport from the Atlantic Seaboard or from the iron and steel centers of the Middle West. This comatose condition, if such a term may be applied, is certainly not due to a lack of all the essential materials and factors for success in iron and steel smelting, but is rather, I think, due largely to the general fact that it is only within a comparatively few years that the centers of population on the Pacific Coast have attained a size that would entitle them to the position of distributing or freight centers, or that the "back country" has been enough built up to make it sufficiently interesting to the railroads to foster trade from the local centers to the interior points rather than seek to supply such local centers and the interior by a transcontinental haul. "Ore Supply Edwin C. Eckel, in his monumental work on Iron Ores, has but little to say concerning the Pacific Coast deposits. He mentions (p. 269) those of Minaret, Madera County, and the Eagle Mountains, Riverside County, Cal., "perhaps 50 to 100 million tons each;" the deposits in Shasta County, worked for the electric furnace on Pitt River; and

Jan 1, 1916

By John A. Davis, David W. Brunton

During the past few years great progress has been made in the United States toward safer, more efficient, and more economical tunneling methods. This advance is partly due, no doubt, to the recent increase in the number of tunnels and adits driven for devel- oping and draining mines and transporting ore. The Bureau of Mines during 1911 and 1912 made a special examination of this phase of mining operations, in connection with an investigation of mining methods and means for preventing accidents. The details especially studied were the provisions for the safety of employees, the kinds of equipment, the methods of driving, and the costs of con- struction. The results and conclusions obtained from that investi- gation are discussed and summarized in this bulletin. Up-to-date information concerning tunneling methods is difficult to obtain. There are few books on the subject; and much of the material they contain, although interesting and of value historically, is now obsolete. The engineering periodicals, it is true, endeavor to keep abreast of the times, and several in nearly every issue present some article bearing upon tunnel work. But the very multiplicity of these articles prevents one from reading them all, and the foreman or superintendent in charge of a tunnel, or the mining engineer designing one, and especially the business man financing the project, has no time for a lengthy search after scattered articles in order to determine the present status of tunnel work. Then, too, knowledge of new methods travels slowly. Valuable inventions and improve- ments in tunneling as well as in all the other industries frequently remain in the notebook of the investigator, or as theses are buried in university libraries, or are published only in journals of small scien- tific societies. New tunneling methods and equipment that are prov- ing safe, efficient, and economical may be totally unknown outside the district in which they originate. This paper, based on a special examination both in the field and in engineering literature, is in- tended to supply data concerning modern and recent tunneling practice in the United States, and to make suggestions that, it is hoped, will result in a saving to the mining industry of energy, capital, and life.

Jan 1, 1916

By R. H. Fernald

In 1900, as far as available records show, there were only two producer-gas power installations in the United States. In June, 1915, the number probably exceeded 1,000. Of this number, some 84.5 per cent comprised small plants using anthracite, and only about 15 per cent of the total number utilized bituminous coal and lignite. In addition to these, two plants used wood, and three or four used oil. In the main, however, the larger sized units are operating on bituminous coal and lignite. During the early years of these plants little success was anticipated from the use of bituminous coals and lignites, but in 1904 and 1905 it was fully demonstrated at the Government testing station at St. Louis that these fuels could be utilized to excellent advantage. However, although many producer-gas plants in daily operation are using bituminous coal and lignite, many power-plant men are still skeptical regarding the successful commercial use of these fuels.

Jan 1, 1916

By C. B. DUTTON, W. F. RITTMAN, E. W. Dean, M. S. HOWARD

NOMENCLATURE USED IN THIS REPORT. In this report the ending ene has been used throughout, except in the bibliography and in quotations from the writings of previous investigators, for all aromatic hydrocarbons, as, for instance, benzene, toluene, xylene. The ending ol, though largely used in technical description, is not correctly applicable to these hydrocarbons, and should be used to designate the impure mixtures of commerce, as distinguished from pure chemical compounds. PRESENT STATUS OF PETROLEUM-REFINING INDUSTRY. Although petroleum is widely distributed, being found in many parts of the world, and although information as to its occurrence and general characteristics seems to have existed from vcry early times, our knowledge of the chemical nature of this substance has been acquired largely within the past 40 years. Within this period a voluminous literature has accumulated, which records work as painstaking as has ever been undertaken in the whole field of chemistry, such as that of C. M. Warren, F. H. Storer, S. P. Sadtler, S. F. Peckham, and C. F. Mabery. Despite this fact, the commercial method of treating crude petroleum for the purpose of procuring marketable products is, in the main, essentially empirical. Much knowledge has been acquired as to methods of separating from crude petroleum such products as are desirable commercially, but little has been done to attain the maximum recovery of such products.

Jan 1, 1916

By H. W. Gillett, G. M. JAMES

In its work on mineral wastes the Bureau of Mines is studying losses in the melting of nonferrous metals and alloys. The greatest of these losses is that of zinc through volatilization in brass melting, but another and considerable loss is that of aluminum and its alloys in the melting of finely divided material. In order to get some idea of the magnitude of the loss in melting aluminum scrap and to find out what methods of melting were used information was gathered in regard to present practice; also experiments were conducted to obtain some data on the relative merits of different methods. As the experiments could be made on a laboratory scale only, they were not expected to solve the problem entirely, the object in making them being rather-by indicating which methods were of greater promise-to narrow the field over which largescale tests and comparisons need be made by those commercially nterested in the problem of melting scrap aluminum.

Jan 1, 1916

By A. S. Watts

The Bureau of Mines has been conducting an investigation of the feldspar resources of the New England and North Appalachian States with a view to greater efficiency and economy in their utilization. Such an investigation was deemed necessary, not only because of the continued and increasing consumption of these minerals, but especially because of the demand for better technical control of the raw materials that are used by the white-ware industries of the United States. Most manufacturers of white pottery wares have only a limited knowledge of the origin, mode of occurrence, and methods of mining and preparation of the materials that they use. Heretofore, owing to a belief that the supply of raw material was unlimited, the manufacturer had concerned himself chiefly with the solution of the problems of manufacture. Within the past few years, however, it has been found that difficulties arise in manufacture which can be traced beyond the manufacturing process and are believed to be due to a need of better control of the materials used. Furthermore, as competition becomes more severe, more attention must be paid to selection of materials in order to minimize consumption and also to avoid unnecessary expense for transportation of material. Doubtless the lack of interest as regards these details has arisen from the fact that in the past a considerable proportion of the whiteware ingredients has been imported and the manufacturer has been forced to rely on the samples submitted and the general uniformity of the source of supply to insure against variation of the material. An extra precaution arising from this lack of definite knowledge still prevails in the common practice of never depending on one source of supply for anyone ingredient. Often the products of three or more producers are blended so that if anyone shall vary without warning the variation arising from its use will not be sufficient to ruin the ware.

Jan 1, 1916

By GEORGE S. POPE

This bulletin is a revision of Bulletin 63 and is published by the Bureau of Mines in order that purchasers of coal for Government, State, municipal, or private use may be informed regarding advances or refinements in sampling coal deliveries and preparing specifications for the purchase of coal. The purchase of coal by the Government under specifications depending on the heating value of the coal, its content of ash and of moisture, and other considerations, rather than upon the reputation or trade name of the coal, was based on the fuel investigations begun by the Technologic Branch of the United States Geological Survey in 1904. The plan was first adopted by the Treasury Department in 1906. Since then the plan, variously modified in form, but the same in principle, has been gradually adopted by other departments until, at present, of the coal used by the Government, the total value of which approximates $8,000,000 annually, more than half is purchased under specifications. The Government publications dealing with the adoption by the Government of the specification plan, the number of contracts awarded on that basis, and the quality of the coal delivered under such contracts in the several fiscal years covered by the reports are given in publioations a listed at the end of this bulletin. Under the authority of acts of Congress making appropriations for analyzing and testing fuels belonging to or for the use of the United States Government, a laboratory is maintained at the headquarters of the Bureau of Mines, Washington, D. C., where samples representing deliveries of coal purchased under specifications for Government use are analyzed and tested. At this laboratory more than 1,200 samples have been analyzed and tested in one month. With the complete equipment and the efficient force employed, the analytical work has been so perfected that the analyses and heating-value tests of the samples received are as accurate as may be reasonably expected in laboratory work of this nature. One of the serious drawbacks to the general adoption of the specification method for the purchase of coal is the difficulty of obtaining at reasonable cost samples of coal that can be considered fairly representative of the commercial product delivered in wagons, railroad cars, or ships. Therefore the method of taking and preparing samples for shipment to the laboratory has been given fully as much care as the making of the analyses and tests, and a general plan of collecting samples fairly representative of the delivered coal has been evolved through various modifications and improvements based on experience and increased knowledge of the physical and chemical characteristics of the various coals that are purchased by the Government. The method that is in general use by the Government is described in the following pages. In connection with studies of the coal deposits of the country, of the best methods of preventing waste in mining, and of increasing efficiency in the utilization of coal belonging to or for the use of the Government, geologists and engineers of the United States Geological Survey and of the Bureau of Mines have visited more than 2,500 coal mines scattered through all of the coal-producing States and Territories. From each mine 2 to 8 or more samples were taken, the number depending upon the size of the mine and its output. The analyses and descriptions of the samples collected up to the end of the fiscal year 1913 are published in Bureau of Mines bulletins 22 a and 85,b and those of samples collected in the fiscal years 1914 and 1915 are presented in a bulletin that will soon be published by the bureau. A study of the analyses of these samples and of the samples taken from cars shipped from a number of the same mines shows that the mine samples are as a rule of higher grade than the average commercial shipments, particularly with respect to containing a lower percentage of ash and having a correspondingly higher heating value. This difference is due to the fact that the Government inspector, proceeding on the basis of what can be done by a good miner, usually removes more of the partings of bone, slate, and other extraneous matter from his mine samples than the average miner does in ordinary practice, the aim of the miner being to get the maximum number of tons past the tipple inspection, as his earnings are based on his output. The average miner, therefore, does not always take as much care as he might in rejecting the impurities. The difference may be caused, too, by the presence of pieces of the mine roof and floor in commercial shipments. The Government inspector can readily

Jan 1, 1916

By W. F. RITTMAN, E. W. Dean

This report presents the results of an investigation conducted by the Bureau of Mines for the purpose of assisting in the establishment of a satisfactory standard method for the analytical distillation of petroleum, a problem of great importance to the petroleum industry. Experiments were performed for the purpose of studying the charac- teristics of methods typical of those in use; comparative studies were made of the efficiencies of the principal types of fractionation ap- paratus available to the petroleum chemist; and the characteristics of a type of apparatus that the results of the experiments seemed to indicate was best adapted to the purpose were investigated in detail. Also, some experiments were made to determine the effect of cracking as a factor in the analytical distillation of petroleum in still heads.

Jan 1, 1916

By Charles Janin, HENNEN JENNINGS

Many articles have been written on the general principles and details of gold dredging, a but it is not possible within the limits of this paper to recapitulate them, and it is thus necessary to assume some knowledge of this literature by the readers of this paper. Although the purpose of this paper is to describe gold dredging in Montana, a brief mention of some early appliances used in New Zealand, Australia, and California may serve as a world-connecting link in our consideration of the development of gold dredging. DREDGES EARLY USED IN NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND CALIFORNIA. Spoon dredges operated by hand were tried in New Zealand on rich spots in the Clutha River with some success as early as 1865. A dredge of this kind is shown in Plate I, A. In 1870 a modification of the spoon, operated by steam and being thus a primitive steamshovel dredge, was worked in New Zealand. Steam-shovel dredging was attempted in California as early as 1888 and 1893, and with some success in later years. The elevator gold dredge with endless bucket chain was put into operation in New Zealand in 1882. Plate I, B, illustrates a type of this dredge operated by current wheels. Plate II, A, shows a steam-operated dredge of this class, also started in 1882. In 1897 R. H. Postlethwaite, connected with the Risdon Iron Works, San Francisco, introduced the dredging practice of New Zealand into California. The first dredge built sank in the turbulent current of the Yuba. The second at Oroville, owned and operated by W. P. Hammon, proved effective and was the start in California of successful gold dredging. Since then the growth of the golddredging industry in California has been so rapid that the gold output from dredges in that State exceeds that of all other States in the Union, and, in fact, of any other country of the world, the value of the gold produced in California by dredging from 1897 to the end of 1914 having been about $71,000,000.

Jan 1, 1916

By Charles Enzian, Donald F. MacDonald

It is a far cry from the small and uncertain mining efforts of 50 years ago to the splendidly equipped and solidly financed organiza- tions that now handle thousands of tons of ore per day. The old mining was largely speculative; the new is practically on a manu- facturing basis. In the old days of mining the aim was, chiefly, to find comparatively rich ore; modern practice looks more toward efficiency in mining and milling, so that vast tonnages of low-grade material may be worked at a profit. The old operators had faith and hoped for good returns; the new ascertain with a fair degree of precision what the available tonnage is, what the cost of mining and treating the ore will be, the time necessary to exhaust the deposit, the capital required, and the net profits to be made. The old mining was financed on a highly speculative basis, and the value of mining stock was largely controlled by the imaginations of the promoters and of the individual holders. In the new régime the financing of mines is often as conservative as the financing of manufactures or railroads, and the value of stock, quoted on the leading exchanges, is controlled by the carefully estimated profits in sight. Of course, with every legitimate industrial enterprise go certain business risks, and mining is not exempted from these. Then, too, valueless mining as well as valueless industrial stocks are sometimes offered for sale by the intentionally dishonest, or the ignorant. However, the prospective purchaser of a mine nowadays, if he is willing to pay for the services of reputable mining engineers, can obtain information on which to base an opinion as to the quality of his investment. The relatively recent development of cheap and efficient methods of mining and of ore dressing has given value to low-grade ore bodies that a few years ago were almost valueless. The iron mines of northern Minnesota have been fruitful in developing efficiency in mining methods, notably the open-cut methods in which steam shovels strip off the overburden and then load the ore directly into railroad trains for transport to the furnace. In 1907 open-cut mining was applied to the low-grade copper ores of Bingham, Utah, with splendid results, and since then it has won a most important place in the min- ing of large masses of low-grade ores in several other mining regions, especially at Santa Rita, N. Mex.

Jan 1, 1916

By H. W. Gillett

This bulletin is issued by the Bureau of Mines as a contribution to the increase of safety and efficiency in the preparation and utilization of the mineral resources in the United States. Notable among the drains on these resources are the demands made by the nonferrousmetal industries, and in these the losses occasioned in melting brass and bronze are worthy of particular attention. This statement will be better appreciated by a consideration of the size of the brass industry. MAGNITUDE OF THE BRASS INDUSTRY. According to the Thirteenth Census, in 1909 there were in the United States 1,021 fu-ms that dealt mainly in brass and bronze. This total included jobbing foundries, manufacturing plants that both cast and machine a brass or bronze product, and rolling mills, but did not include iron foundries having nonferrous departments nor the numerous large brass-foundry departments of manufacturing plants that produce the castings used in the manufacture of electrical apparatus, cash registers, pumps, and the thousands of machines that require brass castings for their construction. Penton's Foundry List for 1910 gives about 1,150 exclusively nonferrous foundries and about 2,300 iron or steel foundries that also melt brass. If the rolling mills and. jobbing foundries in manufacturing plants be included, and if due credit be given to the rapid growth of the industry in the last few years, largely through the stimulation of the automobile busi¬ness, it is probable that not less than 3,600 plants are to-day melting brass or bronze.

Jan 1, 1916

By L. D. Ricketts

Discussion of the paper of L. D. RICKETTS, presented at the San Francisco meeting, September, 1915, and printed in Bulletin No. 100, April, 1915, pp. 711 to 737. FREDERICK LAIST, Anaconda, Mont.-I am going to tell you of some of the results we have been getting in Anaconda during the past two or three months in a large plant which was finished in May. We commenced work in Anaconda a year and a half ago on the construction of a leaching plant which was to have a capacity of 2,000 tons per day. The plant was to treat tailings from the concentrator, containing about 12 1b. of copper to the ton. During the past year we changed our plans and decided to use the flotation process on the tailings from the concentrator, which contained no oxidized copper, and apply the leaching process only to tailings which had accumulated in a large dump below the works. This dump contains about 15,000,000 tons of tailings, and since some of the copper in it is oxidized, we felt that the application of the flotation process would result in the loss of too much of the oxidized copper, particularly as time went on. In starting up we had a number of difficulties to overcome, as is usually the case. They were not of a serious character. The results obtained, so far, have been decidedly encouraging. During July the plant treated a total of 50,000 tons of tailings, or an average of 1,610 tons per clay. The extraction was about 83 per cent., which, on material of the grade treated, meant a. tailing assaying under 0.1 per cent. copper. The acid consumption was about 65 lb. per ton, and the fuel percentage in. roasting was about 4 ¼ . We expect to cut the fuel percentage in the next month or two to about 3 per cent., the high percentage during July being clue to starting up and shutting clown furnaces. We find that iron builds up in the solution to a marked degree. This is not a serious platter with us, because we have cheap sulphuric acid and can reject solution whenever it gets too foul. The extraction of silver has been remarkably good in the large plant. It has averaged better than 75 per cent. It seems that so long as we maintain salt in the solution to a percentage of 10 per cent., the extraction is good. We allowed the salt to fall off in order to find how low a percentage we could use. At about 7 per cent. the silver extraction fell to 65 per cent. This was to be expected, because silver chloride is soluble in strong brine, but not in weak brine.

Jan 12, 1915

By D. A. Lyon

Discussion of the paper of DORSEY A. LYON and ROBERT M. KEENEY, presented at the San Francisco meeting, September, 1915, and printed in Bulletin No. 104, August, 1915, pp. 1707 to 1730. LAWRENCE ADDICKS, Douglas, Ariz.-I think papers of this character, while general in, nature, are of particular value and interest, because when we figure on competing with the East in electrometallurgical industries, on account of the cheap power on the Pacific Coast, we have to take two or three things into account. In the first place, power very rarely amounts to more than 20 per cent. of the total cost of an operation, even .though it be electrometallurgical, and I think it is the common opinion among those who are not familiar with those particular industries, that it amounts to more than 50 or 60 per cent. Take copper refining; we may say that it is 15 per cent. of the total cost. In the second place, around New York City, with 100 per cent. load factor and a reasonably large load, say 10,000 kw., we can generate from a certain class of coal 1 kw.-hr. for about 0.3c. I might say, however, that 0.3c. does not include overhead charges, interest on the investment, etc. The third factor we have to consider out here is that any product to be salable, must command a retail market. It would be useless to produce wire bars here on the Pacific Coast because there is no place to roll them. If we were going to establish a copper refinery, that part of its output which goes into wire bars would have to be taken care of by building a rolling mill alongside of it to turn it into wire and finally make a product that is salable. I do not think, however, that Mr. Lyon need have excluded copper refining from his industries. There are perhaps 50,000,000 lb. of copper a month refined in this country on a custom basis. I think the smelting companies would be very glad to build refineries here if conditions warranted it. The recent extensions of the Great Falls refinery and of the Tacoma refinery in the last few months give evidence of that.

Jan 12, 1915

By Charles Jones

(San Francisco Meeting, September, 1915) IN any discussion of this very large subject we are confronted at the outset with so many obstacles that at best only a fragmentary and rather disconnected presentation can be made of it, and my hope is that building from the few facts I have to offer a more complete knowledge may be secured. In the whole intermountain and Pacific. Coast region, west of Pueblo, Col., and from Canada to Mexico, there is no production of pig iron, and steel production is confined to the manufacture of a small amount of open-hearth steel from scrap. When we consider the area, the resources, and the several centers of population, this condition seems anomalous, even in. the face of every counter argument as to cheap water transportation, or other means of transport from the Atlantic Seaboard or from the iron and steel centers of the Middle West. This comatose condition, if such a term may be applied, is certainly riot due to a lack of all the essential materials and factors for success in iron and steel smelting, but is rather, I think, due largely to the general fact that it is only within a comparatively few years that the centers of population on the Pacific Coast have attained a size that would entitle them to the position of distributing or freight centers, or that the "back country" has been enough built up to make it sufficiently interesting to the railroads to foster trade from the local centers to the interior points rather than seek to supply such local centers and the interior by a transcontinental haul.

Jan 9, 1915

By Arthur Bell

(San Francisco Meeting, September, 1915) . PRIOR to 1908 the oil production in the State of California, had been almost entirely a heavy fuel, oil, with a high flash point, hut changed within a-short period to a large percentage of refining oil with a low flash, by reason of the coming in of the Santa Maria field, the Midway field, and the increased production of the Fullerton field. This is clearly shown in the following tabulation of California's production: Year Barrels . Below -20° Be, Above 20° Be,, Per Cent_ Per Cent. 1905 48,307,000 90 10 1910 77,698,000 SO 20 1912 90,075,000 6o 31 1914 10:3,600,000 47 53 The bringing in of these high percentage's of light oil with their dangerous low flash and the increasing demand for the refined products necessitated the devising of some cheap and efficient means of quickly separating the lighter elements either in the field or at the main distributing points; also it became necessary to remove the excessive percentage of water which many of the light oils carried in emulsion.

Jan 9, 1915

By Emil Gathmann

(San Francisco Meeting, September, 1915) THROUGH wide experience at numerous mills in the United States I have found that there is a decided difference of opinion among the producers of steel as to what constitutes commercially sound steel. Some metallurgists insist upon having, for certain grades of steel, a so-called "open steel," -i.e., one which contains numerous blowholes of varying sizes, and consequently but little volume of true pipe, although a central intermittent shrinkage cavity often extends well down into the ingot: Such blowholes and pipe are expected to weld up during rolling or forging, because their surfaces are not oxidized. Even if this be admitted, included slag particles and a high degree of segregation are bound to be present in the product of such ingots. Blowholes are the result of an oxidized heat, and all heats, unless made or finished in the electric furnace, are oxidized more or less. Subsequent deoxidation, or rather degasification, either in the ladle or in the mold, or in both, is necessary to reduce or prevent blowholes. As is well known, a greater yield of billets or sheets is secured from the ingot by allowing the formation of blowholes, but this is undoubtedly obtained at the expense of the quality of the product. Decided segregation of carbon, phosphorus, and sulphur, as well as small included slag particles, undoubtedly exists throughout the greater portion of all so-called open steel, and cannot be removed by cropping. The first requisite for sound, homogeneous steel ingots and blooms is therefore, in my opinion, so to treat the steel in the furnace, ladle, and mold that "piping" steel is produced. The line of demarcation between harmful and so-called "harmless" blowholes is practically impossible to define. Is it not, therefore, the better and safer practice to use means for the elimination of blowholes and correspondingly reduce the segregation and allow the formation of a well-defined shrinkage cavity or pipe .at the upper end of the ingot? With the relatively cheap deoxidizers available at the present time, e.g., ferro-silicon, aluminum and titanium,

Jan 8, 1915

Discussion of the paper of W. C. PHALEN, presented at the Pittsburgh meeting, October, 1914, and printed in Bulletin No. 93, September, 1914, pp. 2249 to 2265. DAVID T. DAY, Washington, D. C.-Consider the United States broadly and the distribution of the salt industry. Think of the old solar-evaporation process up in New York State, then of the more recent processes in Michigan and Kansas and Louisiana, where the rock salt furnishes a large industry, then of the solar-evaporation process at Salt Lake, then turn to the crucial place in the United States, where there is an embarrassment of salt, and that is California. I am not forgetting' the immense body of salt east of that in the Virgin River country of Utah; but in California the situation is interesting. There are very large quantities of salt in the Searles Marsh region; again, in Southern California, at the southern end of Death Valley, there are two or three mountains of salt which have been explored recently, where the salt is sufficiently pure to be used at once. There is also a large deposit of gypsum, and it would be possible there, by extremely cheap means, to produce an amount of salt sufficient to furnish the United States' greatest needs. The principal reason that capital has been deterred from developing such a large mass is not the fact that solar evaporation produces a great deal of salt around San Francisco, but the fact that if potash salt is to be produced in connection with the salt in the borax region a, great deal of ordinary salt must be disposed of. It cannot be dumped, for it would get back into the brine again; the first rains would bring that salt back into solution again. It must be sold, given away, or hauled to a distance, which would mean a considerable freight charge. The salt will be going begging. E. G. SPILSBURY, New York, N. Y.-The remark of Dr. Day's regarding the likelihood of the production of a large amount of waste salt brings to my mind the condition that obtains in Germany in all of the potash fields. In Germany salt is a government monopoly. In the development of the potash deposits, it becomes a grave question as to how much salt they may be allowed to extract and bring to the surface.

Jan 4, 1915

By C. A. Heberlein

INTRODUCTION THE present war in Europe seems to have stimulated the demand for quicksilver. In July last, the price ranged around $35 per flask of 75 lb., while to-day it seems to fluctuate between $47.50 and $50. The use of quicksilver in the form of fulminate, containing 70 per cent., and as corrosive sublimate, containing 73.8 per cent., must be extensive and a further market advance may be expected. With such an advance, some revival in quicksilver mining maybe looked for, particularly in California, where many abandoned properties exist. What can be done with low-grade quicksilver ores under favorable conditions, particularly with low mining cost, may be seen from the following description of the Oceanic mine, near. San Luis Obispo, Cal. Its operations date back to 1876, when rich sand ores were discovered. In three years 7,400 flasks of quick-silver were produced, but since then the deposit has been only sporadically worked. Until two years ago various attempts had been made by the Oceanic Quicksilver Co. to mine the more refractory "mud rock," which was encountered lying beyond the "sand rock." Mud and sand rock in varying quantities were treated together with poor results, but operations were successful with sand rock of fair percentage. About two years ago,, when all the sand rock had been exhausted, Murray Innes purchased the Oceanic mine. He found large quantities of low-grade mud rock, varying from 6 to 8 lb. of quicksilver per ton, which at the prevailing low price of quick-silver demanded very cheap mining costs, in conjunction with high but cheap metallurgical extraction. At that time the extraction of quicksilver from mud rock ranged between 40 and 50 per cent., as far as I am able to, learn.

Jan 2, 1915

By C. A. Heberlein

The present war in Europe seems to have stimulated the demand for quicksilver. In July last, the price ranged around $35 per flask of 75 Ib., while to-day it seems to fluctuate between $47.50 and $50. The use of quicksilver in the form of fulminate, containing 70 per cent., and as corrosive sublimate, containing 73.8 per cent., must be extensive and a further market advance may be expected. With such an advance, some revival in quicksilver mining may be looked for, particularly in California, where many abandoned properties exist. What can be done with low-grade quicksilver ores under favorable conditions, particularly with low mining cost, may be seen from the following description of the Oceanic mine, near San Luis Obispo, Cal. Its operations date back to 1876, when rich sand ores were discovered. In three years 7,400 flasks of quicksilver were produced, but since then the deposit has been worked only sporadically . Until two years ago various attempts had been made by the Oceanic Quicksilver Co. to mine the more refractory "mud rock," which was encountered lying beyond the " sand rock." Mud and sand rock in varying quantities were treated together, with poor results, but operations were successful with sand rock of fair percentage. About two years ago, when all the sand rock had been exhausted, Murray Innes purchased the Oceanic mine. He found large quantities of low-grade mud rock, varying from 6 to 8 Ib. of quicksilver per ton, which at the prevailing low price of quicksilver demanded very cheap mining costs, in conjunction with high but cheap metallurgical extraction. At that time the extraction of quicksilver from mud rock ranged between 40 and 50 per cent., as far as I am able to learn. Mining The low cost of mining was the principal consideration, since, with mercury at 50c. per pound, the total gross value of the ore did not exceed

Jan 1, 1915