The Scottish Naturalist, 309 



times held natural gold. But the salmoneer-stones ^ in that vein 

 at Longcleuch Head held much silver. ... It is said that vein 

 was poivdered with gold. ... It was a vein, and not a bed." But 

 though he says it was " not a bed," he goes on to speak of two 

 nuggets at Longcleuch Head, of 6 oz. and 5 oz. weight respec- 

 tively, which were " thought to descend from the gold-bed." ^ 

 The working of his stamping-mill at the same place must have 

 been successful, as we are told that, by its means, Bulmer " used 

 to get much small mealy gold" — in the condition, that is, in 

 which he must have got it from crushed or powdered quartz, 

 when the process of mercurial amalgamation was unknown. The 

 brown spar of Longcleuch Head is also described as auriferous — 

 a lump of 2 lb. troy containing "an ounce of pure gold." ^ 



The expression, a vein of gold, so far from being conclusive 

 that auriferous quartz was meant thereby, is one that is sometimes 

 used even at the present day — loosely and incautiously, no doubt 

 — in reference to drift-deposits of nuggety or granular gold on the 

 bed rock. But the reference to a stamping-mill is much more 

 conclusive, seeing that stamping or crushing in the gold-mining 

 of the present day is required only where there are auriferous 

 rocks to crush or reduce to powder. The sinking of " shafts in 

 solid places " — that is, in the solid rock — also points to genuine 

 mining of the Silurian slates of the district for auriferous quartz. 



Atkinson (Calvert, p, 149) says, that "at Longcleuch Head 

 Mr Bulmer made a stamping-mill called abroad Anacanago. 

 Such are used in the West Indies and in Cornwall, where it is 

 sometimes called a plash-mill, to dress tin out of stones, in which 

 the eye can discern little or nothing." This mill was prob- 

 ably connected with what Atkinson speaks of as a "buddle" 

 (Calvert, p. 148) — a term still applied to a similar machine used 

 in the reduction to powder of Cornish tin.'^ 



The parallelism between gold and tin is one of such interest 

 that it deserves a special notice.^ Like gold, tin occurs in nature 

 — in Cornwall, for instance — in two conditions : (i) as mi^ie-tin, 

 disseminated through veins, lodes, or gangues of quartz or other 



^ From his allusion to their being argentiferous, he may here refer to 

 Galena. 



2 Calvert, p. 148. 



^ Ibid., p. 149. 



* Two figures of this dttdd/e are given in the article "Tin " in Chambers's 

 Encyclopaedia. 



"> Calvert, moreover, tells us (p. 190) that gold is associated with tin-stone 

 at Leadhills. 



