It may here be stated that some twelve years ago I did a large amount of practical silver assaying on the Barrier (Broken Hill), which was not then so accessible a place as it is now, and got closely correct results from a number of different mines, with an extemporised plant almost amusing in its simplicity.  All I took from Adelaide were a small set of scales capable of determining the weight of a button down to 20 ozs. to the ton, a piece of cheese cloth to make a screen or sieve, a tin ring 1 1/2 in. diameter, by 1/2 in. high, a small brass door knob to use as a cupel mould, and some powdered borax, carbonate of soda, and argol for fluxes; while for reducing lead I had recourse to the lining of a tea-chest, which lead contains no silver—­John Chinaman takes good care of that.  My mortar was a jam tin, without top or bottom, placed on an anvil; the pestle a short steel drill.  The blacksmith at Mundi Mundi Station made me a small wrought iron crucible, also a pair of bent tongs from a piece of fencing-wire.  The manager gave me a small common red flower pot for a muffle, and with the smith’s forge (the fire built round with a few blocks of talcose schist) for a furnace, my plant was complete.  I burned and crushed bones to make my bone-dust for cupelling, and thus provided made nearly forty assays, some of which were afterwards checked in Adelaide, in each instance coming as close as check assays generally do.  Nowadays one can purchase cheaply a very effective portable plant, or after a few lessons a man may by practice make himself so proficient with the blowpipe as to obtain assay results sufficiently accurate for most practical purposes.

Coming then to the actual work of prospecting.  What the prospector requires to know is, first, the usual locality of occurrence of the more valuable minerals; secondly, their appearance; thirdly, a simple mode of testing.  With respect to occurrence, the older sandy and clay slates, chlorite slates, micaceous, and hornblendic schists, particularly at or near their junction with the intrusive granite and diorite, generally form the most likely geological country for the finding of mineral lodes, particularly gold, silver and tin.  But those who have been engaged in practical mining for long, finding by experience that no two mineral fields are exactly alike in all their characteristics, have come to the conclusion that it is unwise to form theories as to why metals should or should not be found in certain enclosing rocks or matrices.  Some of the best reef gold got in Victoria has been obtained in dead white, milky-looking quartz almost destitute of base metal.  In South Australia reef gold is almost invariably associated with iron, either as oxide, as “gossan;” or ferruginous calcite, “limonite;” or granular silica, conglomerated by iron, the “ironstone” which forms the capping or outcrop of many of our reefs, and which is often rich in gold.

But to show that it is unsafe to decide off-hand in what class of matrix metals will or will not be found, I may say that in my own experience I have seen payable gold in the following materials:—­