GOLD PROSPECTING

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 55, 6 March 1937, Page 10

GOLD PROSPECTING

MINISTER'S ATTITUDE

MUCH FUTILE EXPENDITURE

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, This Day.

The definite opinion that much of the assistance now granted to gold prospectors working ground and tailings that had been worked three or four times by the early diggers, and since then two or three times by Chinamen, was a positive waste of money, was expressed by the Minister of Mines (the Hon. P. C. Webb) in an interview

this morning,

The Minister said he could not see any possible hope of developing any areas that way. The easily-won gold had been won by the early experienced diggers, and with all the expenditure of money through the Unemployment Board on prospecting in those areas not one mine had been discovered worth mentioning. Nevertheless, a lot of useful information had been collected as the result of all the prospecting done, and a considerable amount of gold had been won.

"We have now reached the stage when the latest scientific knowledge must be brought into play and the most modern machinery utilised in order to work lower-grade deposits on a large and economic scale," stated the Minister. . .