246 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



DECREASE IN THE PRODUCTION OF GOLD. 



Bhike, in his late " Report on the Precious Metals," has the fol- 

 lowinn^ remarks on the probable future decline in the production of 

 goUl, which are worthy of notice ; as also those on placer arrd vein 

 mining, and the prt^bable rise in value of gold to be quoted here- 

 after : — 



"The statistics of the production of gold in California, Austra- 

 lia, and other countries show very clearly the familiar fact that in 

 all newly discovered gold regions a maximum production is soon 

 attained, and is succeeded by a gradual but certain decrease, ow- 

 ing to the exhaustion of the placer deposits. Thus, in California, 

 the maximum product was attained in the j'ear 1853, when the 

 shipments were about 55,000,000 dollars, and the production was 

 doubtless from 60,000,000 dollars to 65,000,000 dollars in value. It 

 is now much less than half of that amount. In Australia, in the 

 same year (1853), the reported shipments from Victoria amounted 

 to 3,150,020 troy ounces, and the production was nearly 60,000,000 

 dollars in value.* In 1867, the shipments were only 1,433,687 

 ounces, much less than half as much as in 1853. Tlie apparently 

 nearly uniform production of California for the past ten years, 

 judging from the shipments of treasure from the port of San Fran- 

 cisco, is the result of the opening of other gold and silver producing 

 regions in Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, and Arizona, which, so far as 

 their production depends upon placers, are in their turn liable to 

 rapid exhaustion. In British America, and in Idaho and Montana, 

 the production of gold is now rapidly diminishing. Ilussia is the 

 only country in which a nearly uniform production has been main- 

 tained through a series of years. This may perhaps be explained 

 by the fact that the mines have not been free to all, and conse- 

 quently comparatively few persons have i)een engaged in develop- 

 ing them. The climate, also, is unfavorable to rapid and continu- 

 ous working, and the method of washing placer gravel by ma- 

 chinery in use there is necessarily slow, and gives limited results, 

 which cannot compare with those obtained by the gigantic system 

 of sluicing practised in California and Australia. There has also 

 been in Russia a constant extension eastward of the gold region by 

 new discoveries, extending even to the Pacific coast, and there is, 

 doubtless, an immense area of virgin ground from which the gold 

 supply of Russia may be for a long time maintained at the present 

 tigures, or, possibly, greatly increased, especially if all restrictions 

 upon mining are removed, and the country is thrown open to the 

 skilled miners of other regions. This Siberian gold-field, with the 

 great mountain region south of it, extending into China and India, 

 is the only extended region now known in regard to which there 

 is any uncertainty in respect to its probable future yield of gold. 



*' The existence of very ancient workings in the Altai is signifi- 

 cant, and leads us to question whether this great interior region 

 has not already yielded up its most accessible treasures." — Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science and Arts, May, 1869. 



f Calculated at 19 dollars per ounce. 



