“A TIMELY STATEMENT”

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXX, Issue 8450, 8 April 1933, Page 2

“A TIMELY STATEMENT”

ASSAYS AND COMPANY PROMOTIONS WARNING PROM WAIHI The note of warning, issued by Mr A. H. V. Morgan, director of the Waihi School of Mines, at the annual meeting last week, when he pointed out that intending Investors in mining ventures should not be guided entirely by assay values—which did not necessarily indicate the average value of the ore bodies from which the samples were taken—has been given wide publicity. On this subject the > Wellington Evening Post in its editorial columns says:—There are certain things, well known to gold miners, that the public seldom grips—things which have to be repeated when pub&c speculation in gold-min-ing ventures takes a new lease of life. The director of the Waihi School of Mines, therefore, does a public service in reminding the public that a perfectly correct assay of a parcel of stone may mean nothing. A school of mines can guarantee that the stone sent to it yielded, under assay treatment, certain gold, silver, etc., in proportions that would make a ton of the stone worth so much gold, so much silver, etc., if all the rest of the ton'were the same quality of stone and if the extracting process applied on the large scale were as efficient as the assay process applied on the small scale. But this guarantee bristles with “ifs.” Treatment of ore on a large scale has to be cheap enough in costto make large-scale operations profitable; if these operations fail on the ground of cqst, or through lack of efficiency of'extraction relatively to extraction by assay, then the ■yyhole calculation of profitmaking is undermined. ACCURACY IN SAMPLING

There is no reasonable presumption that a large body of ore corresponds in richness? and character with the sample q£ stone forwarded tq the school of mines unless the sampling has been expertly and honestly done, and unless the samples' have been taken from the ore-body they are to come from —not frqm some gqldpocket somewhere else. That is why the director of the Waihi Schoql of Mines emphasises the “how” and the “where.” As to the “where,” falce representation of stone as being the product of a reef it never came out of is the oldest of tricks. What check can a school of mines have on that?, As to the “how,” sampling (the taking of samples) across the face of a reef, and at regular intervals in driving along the reef, is something of an art. Unless the sample is representative the whole calculation is discounted—that is to say, a fool or a knave may make the assaying of parcels useless to the investor. Many people who read prospectuses containing assay tests know the various pitfalls. Not much thinking is needed to warn the reader. But for those who are not warned, the director’s remark that an assay test of £IOO a ton may mean nothing at all is a timely statement, and helps the industrial mine against tie Wildcat. ;■ *