SMELTING ORES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1320, 17 March 1877, Page 8

SMELTING ORES.

Advices from Lima state that a new process for smelting ores has been intro« duced there. The item says "the process seems to vary from others merely in 1 the fact that crude petroleum and super-" heated steam are employed in smelting !ores. The heat generated is said to be immense. Experiments so far with refractory oresj- both copper and silver, are ! very successful. The process takes much -leas time than that needed for ordinary' and a larger percentage of valuable metal is saved, little being lost by volatilization on account of the intense heat." The last few lines make us think that the writer is a "little off" in the knowledge of what he was writing about. The meagre description given is unsatisfactory, but it strikes us that it may be the same process which was introduced here a few years since, and made such a, i lamentable fizzle/ They got intense heat in that, we recollect, and there was a small lead mine going up the chimney while the fires were running. Crude petroleum and superheated steam were used in that process as in this, but if the «ood people of Lima make no more out of the " new process " than we did on this coast, they willnot get rich veryfast. Some of our good citizens were considerably out of pocket in trying to make the thing work here after buying the patent, and if the miners in Lima do not look out they will come to grief also.— San Francisco Press.