THE THAMES SCHOOL OF MINES. Lecture by Professor Black. Auckland, Dec 18.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 134, 26 December 1885, Page 4

THE THAMES SCHOOL OF MINES. Lecture by Professor Black. Auckland, Dec 18.

rofessor Black delivered a lecture on the above subject at the Choral Hall last evening under the auspices of the Chamber of Commerce and the Auckland 1 Brokers' Association. Mr G. Aiokin, Chairman of the Chamber of Commeroe,, occupied the ohair, and the hall tf as about three quarters full. The Chairman briefly introduced Professor Black, mentioning that he had been commissioned by the Government to report on the goldfields of the. province. This. he had done very satisfactorily. Professor Slack was a mineralogist and chemist of considerable eminence, and he was sure that the lecture he was about to deliver would be interesting and instructive. The Chairman having briefly sketched the exeriioni made by the Chamber of Commerce for )he establishment of a School of Mines -a project which had hung fire for years he was happy to say that the result of Professor Black's visit would be the establishment of such an institution. Professor Black who was received with applause, said he was about to address them on a matter of importance not only to the people of Thames and Auckland, but also to the inhabitants of the colony. Before referring to the School of Mines, he would say a word or two about the Coromandel Peninsula, and its mineral resources. It would take year? of study to speak with confidence of itß mineral resources, and as he had only been there five weeks, he could not express a strong opinion. He ne'er, till he came to the district, saw country of that kind carrying gold. Had a piece of tufa from the Thames been shown trim at Dunedin, he would have said, ••Don't search for gold there." Yet in country in which geologists would say they were not entitled to find gold, at the Thames, they got gold not two or three ounces to the ton, as they got in Otago, but two, three, and four ounces to the pound. When at Coromandel the other day, he visited a mine called the Success, from which, though it had been worked for years, only 17 tons had been crushed, but with a fair profit. The reef was not a reef at all, but a small seam the thickness of a penknife At the Thames itself there was an extra ordinary variety of minerals - gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, cadmium, and 9ulphur, and over and above these there was arsenic, which, in the matter of extracting gold, were very objectionable. Arsenic and antimony was the curse of the Thames country, from Cape Colville to Te Aroha. Arsenio existed in many forme, and it became a question it would not be advisable to do away with copper plates altogether, and depend on mercury troughs and long strakes of blankets. In view of such questions as these, the School of Mines would have its work cut out in experimenting in the direction of the best method of saving the gold, the silver, the mercury, and the lead. The School of Mines had been established, and it remained for the people of Auckland to give it encouragement to prevent it from dying out. People at the Thames called all the eulphides minerals, and he was going to make a few remarks on the roasting of the minerals. He was aware that the minerals had been roasted at the Thames and the West Coast, but he did not beliexe that the roasting process had ever had a proper test Several mistakes had been made. The conditions of success.tal roasting were as follows : —The roasting must be conducted with astrongdraught, andonpassingthrough the fuinacia.llier*ir- must^p«iaa ) p,v,QXvJthe.ore r ijtfaiT'"' was being roasted. Roasting in a retort, as had been tried at the Thames, was useless, as the oxygen had no chance of combining with the substance. The second condition was that the roasting should be conducted at so low a temperature that there should be no fusion. The reason of this was that fusion destroyed the process The third condition was that roasting must go on until the whole of the sulphur, arsenic, and antimony had disappeared in vapour. The last condition was that after the fumes of the sulphur, etc., had disappeared, the furnace must bo heated to white heat, as the sulphate of iron interfered with the Buccess of the operation. There was a danger which had not occurred to him until quite lately. Whe* galena was present in the furnace, precautions had to be taken to prevent the lead carrying away the gold and silver. The instructor of the School of Mines would keep the miners right on these points, as a great deal of gold was lost through a want of knowledge which the veriest tyro in chemistry should know. The lecturer then proceeded to allude to the Coromandel Peninsulain connection with the industries of the province, viz , the manufacture of sulphuric acid from the sulphurous oxide. The sulphuric acid* might be made by conducting the fumes from the chimney of the roasting apparatus into one of the long diau3ed drives. Arsenic and antimony might also be precipitated by this process. By mixing the sulphuric aoid thus obtained with salt made from sea water, they had muriatic acid. Nitric acid might also be made by utilising the sulphuric acid with saltpetre imported from Chili The lecturer spoke eloquently on the manufacture of superphosphate of lime, and on the necessity of saving the phosphorus as a country. He believed that the present desert state of Palestine was due to the waste of the last - named valuable material. In concluding, the Professor asked the people of Auckland to support the Thames School of Mines, by contributing £1 for £1. Branohes of the Bchool should be established at other mining centres. At the conclusion of the lecture a vote of thanks was accorded to Professor Black, on the motion of the Chairman. Professor Blaok, in acknowledging the compliment, expressed himself grateful for the hearty co-operation he had received in Auckland and in the Coromandel Peninsula.