The grinding was done between two stones, and possibly by means of such primitive mechanism as is used to-day by the natives of Korea.

The Korean Mill is simply a large hard stone to which a rocking motion is given by manual power by means of the bamboo handles while the ore is crushed between the upper and basement stone.

Solomon says “there is no new thing under the sun”; certainly there is much that is not absolutely new in appliances for gold extraction.  I lately learned that the principle of one of our newest concentrating machines, the Frue vanner, was known in India and the East centuries ago; and we have it on good authority—­that of Pliny—­that gold saving by amalgamation with mercury was practised before the Christian era.  It will not be surprising then if, ere long, some one claims to have invented the Korean Mill, with improvements.

Few subjects in mineralogical science have evoked more controversy than the origin of gold.  In the Middle Ages, and, indeed, down to the time of that great philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton, who was himself bitten with the craze, it was widely believed that, by what was known as transmutation, the baser metals might be changed to gold; and much time and trouble were expended in attempts to make gold—­needless to say without the desired result.  Doubtless, however, many valuable additions to chemical science, and also some useful metallic alloys, were thus discovered.

The latest startling statement on this subject comes from, of course, the wonderland of the world, America.  In a recently published journal it is said that a scientific metallurgist there has succeeded in producing absolutely pure gold, which stands all tests, from silver.  Needless to say, if this were true, at all events the much vexed hi-metallic question would be solved at once and for all time.

It is now admitted by all specialists that the royal metal, though differing in material respects in its mode of occurrence from its useful but more plebeian brethren of the mineral kingdom, has yet been deposited under similar conditions from mineral salts held in solution.

The first mode of obtaining this much desired metal was doubtless by washing the sand of rivers which flowed through auriferous strata.  Some of these, such as the Lydian stream, Pactolus, were supposed to renew their golden stores miraculously each year.  What really happened was that the winter floods detached portions of auriferous drift from the banks, which, being disintegrated by the rush and flow of the water, would naturally deposit in the still reaches and eddies any gold that might be contained therein.

The mode of washing was exactly that carried on by the natives in some districts of Africa to-day.  A wooden bowl was partly filled with auriferous sand and mud, and, standing knee-deep in the stream, the operator added a little water, and caused the contents of the bowl to take a circular motion, somewhat as the modern digger does with his tin dish, with this difference, that his ancient prototype allowed the water and lighter particles to escape over the rim as he swirled the stuff round and round.  I presume, in finishing the operation, he collected the golden grains by gently lapping the water over the reduced material, much as we do now.