preventing evaporation, leaking and soaking, which take away much of the water from flumes and ditches.

Prospecting.—"Prospecting" is the search for gold. The instruments used by the prospector for placer-mines are usually the pan, pick and shovel. He should be familiar with the general laws of the distribution of gold, and then try the dirt in the most favorable places. If there is any gold in a district, he can scarcely fail to find specks of it by washing dirt from the bed-rock in the ravines, and in bars. The existence of gold in a district having been established, close observation will suggest to the prospector where he may reasonably expect to find the best diggings. It is usually found that placer-gold is collected in those places where, if he had been familiar with the ancient topography of the country, he should have had reason to suppose that it would be.

Quartz Mining.—Quartz mining differs much from placer mining. For the former, more capital, more experience, more complicated machinery and richer material are required than for the latter. The placer miner throws the dirt into the water, which then does the work; whereas the pulverizing of rock is a nice operation, requiring constant attention. Quartz requires a mill and water-power; placer dirt is washed in a simple sluice. Dirt containing ten cents in the cubic yard may pay the hydraulic miner, but the quartz miner must have a hundred times as much in a cubic yard of vein stone, or he cannot work. The placer gold, when freed from the baser material surrounding it, is much of it in coarse particles, which are easily caught by their specific gravity; the quartz gold must be reduced to a fine powder before it be set free from its gangue, and with the fineness of the particles increases the difficulty of catching them.

Auriferous quartz lodes are often found by accident. Not unfrequently it happens that a rich streak of pay-dirt in a placer claim is followed up to the quartz vein from which it came. While miners are out walking or hunting, they occasionally will come upon lodes in which the gold is seen sparkling. Some good leads have been found by men employed in making roads and cutting ditches. The quartz might be covered with soil, but the pick and shovel revealed its position and wealth. In Tuolumne county in 1858, a hunter shot a grizzly bear on the side of a steep canon, and the animal tumbling down, was caught by a projecting point of rock. The hunter followed his game, and while skinning the animal, discovered that the point of rock was auriferous quartz. In Mariposa county, in 1855, a robber attacked a miner, and the latter saw the rock behind his assailant sparkle in the sunlight, at a spot where a bullet struck a wall of rock. He killed the robber, and found that the rock was gold-bearing quartz. In Nevada county, several years ago, a couple of unfortunate miners who had prepared to leave California, and were out on a drunken frolic, started a large boulder down a steep hill. On its way down, it struck a brown rock and broke a portion of it off—exposing a vein of white quartz which proved to be auriferous, induced the disappointed miners to remain some months longer in the state, and paid them well for remaining. Science and experience do not appear to give much assistance in prospecting for quartz lodes. Chemists, geologists, mineralogists and old miners, have not done better than ignorant men and new-comers. Most of the best veins have been discovered by poor and ignorant men. Not one has been found by a man of high education as a miner or geologist. No doubt geological knowledge is valuable to a miner, and it should assist him in prospecting; but it has never yet enabled any body to find a valuable claim.