MINING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1797, 30 April 1886, Page 18

MINING NOTES.

Government prospecting parties (says the Mataura Ensign) have ever been an utter failure, but we do not think a heaven-born statesman is required to formulate some system of subsidising local effort. The experience of practical men would be enlisted in the .service, and the work be constantly under the supervision of interested and practical men. Another form of assisting mining enterprise consists in the opening of the higher country by the construction of tracks. In our own district two such works are of special importance. The one is the Waikaia Bush track, so frequently advocated in our columns ; the other the track to the Nevis, so cavalierly treated by an unsympathetic county council. Of the former we need sny nothing, ns recent discoveries have demonstrated its importance and utility. The latter, besides opening a vast extent of auriferous country, would afford access to the great cinnabar deposits about the Lome Peak. It is to be hoped that in the inevitable reconstruction of the Ministry the portfolio of Mines may be allotted to a man with some slight knowledge of the industry, who will take home higher view of the office than to sink into a peripatetic machine for the universal distvibutic n of soft sawder.

There is considerable regret experienced here in mining circles (writes our Auckland correspondent) that the month's trial run of La Monte's furnace did not come up to anticipation, and that the cost oF treatment of ores was so largely in excess of the estimate. Some £13,000 had been staked in the venture; and although if the plant is sold, as it is expected, at a sum equal to the compnny's indebtedness, the shareholders will come out of it with only a loss averaged at 7s a share, it would have been more satisfactory had a more extended trial been given. That further trial, however, anew syndicate, with La Monte at its head, is likely to give the smelting process. It has been demonstrated that there are ores in the upper Thames which no other process than the fire process can successfully deal with, and it is believed that the problem of cheap fluxes will yet be solved.