The Star. TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 1898. NOTES AND NOTIONS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6122, 8 March 1898, Page 2

The Star. TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 1898. NOTES AND NOTIONS.

Me E. P. Rathbone, who is the brother of Mr Wilfred Rathbone, of Auckland, and who left England with the intention of inspecting the New Zealand and Western Australian goldfields, got no further than those of Ontario and British Columbia. He read an interesting paper on these latter fields at the the Royal Colonial Institute meeting, presided over by Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal. In it he expressed the opinion that gold-minino- in the southern portion of British Columbia should soon become a large and paying industry, although the annual heavy snowfall, which covers the ground for five months of the year, limits the time for mining operations, while the prolific growth of vegetation in the summer months makes the clearing of the ground by the prospectors a gigantic task. It is to hydraulic mining that British Columbia owes its principal production of alluvial gold at the present time, the system of working being very similar to that pursued mlsew Zealand. The number of really payable concerns in the Ontario gold-fields, he thinks, will be comparatively few and far between unless their nominal capitals EriT 9 " 7 !. f^' and v their workin S «&talß high; but he believes that as railways open up the country British Columbia will be found as productive as the gold-mS regions m the adjoining State/of AmeS.

suaded him to transfer hif S ' ODe Z 6l '" the Victorian to the Nw^ g l' a T «° m rtore he continued « L O mW ""?} 1891 or 1892, when he "JS fW mt ' 1

Scotchman, -who was . ©jciginally amerohant at Gdelong.