away of money, both in England and India, that at present necessarily occurs, would be averted.  Now the country has already been largely explored, and the Government is therefore in a position to know the places where favourable results will probably be obtained, and as the State, besides the other advantages I have previously pointed out, gets a royalty on the gold, it has a natural interest in doing its utmost to select the most favourable sites for new mining operations.  Such sites then should, with the aid of experienced mining advisers, be selected by the Government, which itself should execute the preliminary works previously specified, and then advertise the blocks, so selected and prepared, for sale in the London market.  For such prepared blocks purchasers could readily be found, and if the price they paid merely covered the bare cost of the preliminary works, the expenditure of capital that would thus be stimulated, with all its consequent direct and indirect advantages to the province, would amply repay the Government for its trouble and outlay.

But the State may give yet another stimulus to mining, which, I feel sure, would prove of great advantage to the State.  The present royalty is five per cent. on the value of the gold produced, and from this source the Government last year received 5 lakhs and 18,000 rupees.  Now the prosperous companies which are paying good dividends do not feel this to be a very serious burden, but it is a serious burden—­every shilling of expenditure indeed is—­to a company which has not begun to pay dividends, and I would suggest that, till a company is able to pay dividends, one-half of the royalty, or, better still, the whole of it, might be remitted.  This sum would by no means be lost to the State, for does not the milk that is left in the cow go to the calf?

The measures I have proposed would be of such obvious advantage to the State that, were I a shareholder, or intending investor, in mines in Mysore, I should have no hesitation in suggesting their adoption, but it may be as well to mention that I am neither.

I drove one afternoon with my host to the court on the field, and had some conversation with the magistrate regarding thefts at the mines, and it certainly appears that a special Act is required to check the stealing of gold.  Sponge-gold (i.e., gold from which the quicksilver has been evaporated), quartz, or gold amalgam, if found in the possession of any person, renders the individual liable to prosecution, if the possession of gold in any of these forms cannot be satisfactorily accounted for.  But the individual cannot be called to account for having ordinary pure gold in possession.  Now in a man’s possession at the mines there has been found all the means of separating the gold by quicksilver, and it is therefore quite clear that gold stolen in either of the first three mentioned forms may, after having been deprived of its concomitant impurities, be held by an individual to any amount, and even by a workman earning 6d. a day, without his being liable to be called upon to account for its possession.  Some Act to meet this kind of case is then clearly required—­an Act similar to our Mysore Coffee-stealing Prevention Act, which provides that any person not a planter is liable to be called upon to account for coffee in his possession.