PUHIPUHI SILVER FIELD.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume VII, Issue 275, 26 September 1896, Page 2

PUHIPUHI SILVER FIELD.

Mb Andrew Gordon French, the Engineer and metallurgist who has charge of the British Gold and Silver Company's i eduction Works atPuhipnhi, claims that by the process which he has introduced a very high per centage of the precious metals can be Jsaved at a minimum costev, For months "^ these alterations have been going on, and the shareholders aud the public generally have been anxiously waiting and watching for the result .of the new process, for it is pretty generally admitted that Puhipuhi now hangs on French's treatment of the ore ; that if he fails the field will again be duffered out, and if he succeeds there will be a big boom in Puhipuhi. The process which Mr French is about to use is to silver what cyanide is to gold. It would almost be correct to say that it is the " cyanide " treatment of silver,; for by the cyanide treatment most people understand it t mean the extraction of gold by leaching or bringing the gold into solution las the first part of the operation. I It is by this process of leaching or ! bringing the silver into solution that Mr French intends to treat the Puhipuhi ore. Instead of using cyanide as the solving agent as with gold, hyposulphite of soda is nsed to bring the silver into solution. And it has these great advantages t it does not bear a patent royalty, it is exceedingly cheap, and the solution lasts for a very long time. Exactly the same plant as is used in the treatment of gold by cyanide is used for the treatment of silver by the hyposulphite solution, but there is.in the silver process this addition : the ore after being crushed must" be roasted. This is necessary to convert the silver in the ore which occurs as sulphide into a chloride, otherwise it cannot be brought into -solution by the agent named. The process is a simple one, though to the uninitiated it may seem somewhat complex. The. silver occurs in the ore as a "sulphide," that, is silver combined with sulphur. In thatform it cannot be dissolved by the hyposulphite of soda, but by roasting it in a furnace with salt the sulphur is driven off, the salt creates chlorine, and the silver combining with this*— for which it has a great affinity—becomes a " chloride "of silver. In this form it readily dissolves in a solution of the hyposulphite of soda—and just as sugar dissolves in tea, so the silver becomes liquid, and is subsequently with the aid of another re-agent or chemical precipitated or thrown down as a powder. The powder is again treated and brought into metallic silver. The process is to the scientific metallurgist simplicity itself compared with the complex process which Mr French had to adopt at the Monowai mine, where the ore is of a particularly refractory and rebellious nature. Puhipuhi ore is not as many people suppose like the Monowai, very refractory. As a silver ore it is one of the simplest to treat and can give little trouble, t

The potentialities depending on Mr French's treatmeat of the ore are prodigious, forjjshould he succeed, as we believe he will, then Puhipuhi will be opened as a silver field, and anyone versed in silyier; mining knows that "that means more than the opening of a goldfield, for the reason 7 that silver lodes are larger, more continuous. and permanent thangold lodes. MrtFxench affirms that he will make 13 ouj^Nß^pf silver to the ton pay all expenT^ss[pi we know that there is practica^pn * unlimited supply of such ore'in- PuMpuhi. All that is required is the prpcessto trejit jt.and works large enough , to deal with big quantities of the ore;;,.'. Both in America and Australia larger fortunes have been made out of silver mining than out of gold mines for the reason- just stated, • that silver mines are more permanent than gold mines. P.iiHipuhi is a "network of reefs, all # which bear silver in more pr less; qu^n.: tity, and when the field is thoroughly opened up it shoxild prove a source of great wealth to the district and to the colony.—Northern Advocate.