3IO The Scottish Naturalist. 



rocks or minerals, and requiring to be separated, first by being 

 " stamped to a very fine powder," by some species of stamping- 

 mill or rock-crushing apparatus, and then washed or dressed by 

 the buddle ; and (2) as stream-Xvci — the result of the disintegra- 

 tion of stanniferous granite or other rocks — requiring only to be 

 washed out of alluvium or drift. 



It would appear, however, that the stamping-mill and the bud- 

 dle have no necessary connection ; so that, in Cornwall, the one 

 is sometimes used without the other — the buddle without the 

 stamping-mill — and that, while the stamping-mill implies rock to 

 be crushed, the buddle may imply only alluvial deposits to be 

 washed. This was, no doubt, the case also in the gold-diggings 

 of Crawford in the sixteenth century — so that, when a stamp- 

 ing-mill is spoken of, our legitimate inference is that there was 

 auriferous quartz to be crushed ; while the buddle may have been 

 used to wash the drift, or the powdered auriferous quartz, or 

 both. 



According to Calvert (p. 136), the Cottonian Reporter affirms 

 that '' gold may \be see?{\ dispersed in certain black rocks of 

 chiver" — that is, in all probability, in Silurian slates.^ But what 

 the very same Reporter really says — according to Mr Cochran 

 Patrick — is this : " Gold inaye lye or grow e dispersed in certeyne 

 blacke rocke of chevere."^ By what would appear to be an in- 

 terpolation of Calvert of the words '' be seen," the Cottonian 

 Reporter is represented as making an assertion concerning auri- 

 ferous quartz or slates as actually existent ; whereas the Re- 

 porter's own words, as given by Mr Patrick — " maye lye or 

 growe " — point only to the possible existence of such quartz or 

 slates. And this is a suggestion illustrative of the way in which 

 errors are apt to arise, from the quotation by different writers, of 

 varying competency for the deciphering and interpretation of 

 ancient manuscripts, of the same old chronicles. Where the 

 wish is father to the thought, what are represented originally as 



1 While it is possible, with considerable Confidence, to give the modem 

 synonyms of some of the minerals mentioned by old chronicles as being asso- 

 ciated with gold [e.g., keele), there are others whose modern synonymy can- 

 not probably be determined. Thus we cannot say what is the "bright-black 

 saxcer-stone, reddish, which in Scotland engendereth gold " (Calvert, p. 

 155). Nor do we know exactly what is meant by " Brimstone " (Calvert, p. 

 136). 



^ Introduction to Mr Cochran Patrick's * Records of Mining in Scotland,' 

 p. xxii. — not yet published. I am here indebted to that author for the use of 

 a proof of this description of the Crawford mines by the Cottonian Reporter 



