MINING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7163, 14 May 1891, Page 3

MINING.

♦- MR SEDDON INTERVIEWED.

[Per Pbess Association."! AUCKLAND, Mat 13. When interviewed by a Herald representative regarding his impression of the goldfields in the Auckland district, the Hon B. J. Seddon said that the big pump at the Thames was a very expensive plant and quite obsolete, the type of engine used having been condemned thirty years ago. He found that excellent work was being done at the Thamea School of Mines, where there were thirty or forty pupils, from the schoolboy of fifteen to the gray-haired man of fifty or more. The difficulty was the lack of a practical metallurgist, and it was his intention to endeavour to make arrangements with Professor Wilkinson, of the Otago University, to spend part of his vacation there. If such an arrangement could not be effected, he proposed to get Parliament either to import a first-class metallurgist from the English School of Mines, or to give a vote in aid to assist the Thames School of Mines to do so, in order that the ores might be subjected to the different methods of treatment required in various districts.. As to Caßsell's process, whilst he spoke highly of it, he said that he considered the chargea were bo high that it was cheaper to lose the extra gold and to go on with the old wet process. The Waiarongomai field presented, in Borne reßpectß, a lamentable and heart-breaking state of affairs — large and expensive works shut up, capital misdirected, shareholders ruined and the district depopulated. If a twentieth part of the money devoted to plant had been spent in prospecting and assaying, the quartz discovered there might have made Waiorongomai a fine goldfield.