224 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



Why need millions of dollars be wasted by our farmers in vainly 

 trying to obtain native gold, when all he has is some of the yellow 

 sulphides of iron, or of iron and copper, or of shining mica scales, 

 weathered yellow. If they know the simple fact that native gold 

 is soft and will cut without falling to pieces, while all other yellow 

 minerals, mistaken for gold, are harder, and when cut are brittle, 

 no such costly mistakes need exist, even when in minute quanti- 

 ties, the properties of gold can be shown by scratching the supposed 

 gold with a knife blade or a needle point. If it be gold, the metal 

 will ridge up and lay over without breaking, as will a damp soil 

 with a stout sward under the plow. If the mineral is not gold, it 

 will ridge up and crumble on both sides of the furrow, like dry, bare 

 soil under a double mould-board plow. Or, again, if a bit of the 

 mineral is struck by a hammer, it will ilatten and spread out, if 

 gold; but crumble, if some other yellow mineral. 



Simple practical facts like these, can easily be taught students, 

 if they are given sufficient time for the laboratory practice. The 

 student of agriculture in Pennsylvania, working in any rocky dis- 

 trict, ought to have a practical acquaintance with the commoner 

 minerals and rocks; to know how to distinguish the useful from the 

 useless; to have some familiarity with building stones, road-making 

 materials, the modes of occurrence of coal, petroleum, gas, salt, 

 clay, limes, mortars, cement, slate, ochres and mineral paints, fer- 

 tilizers and waters and ores of iron, manganese, gold, silver, lead, 

 zinc, etc. It is not to be expected that so much work can be intro- 

 duced into the already crowded curriculums of the various schools 

 of agriculture, but it would be comparatively easy to insert it in 

 the form of options or electives, so arranged that the geological 

 subjects need be taken only by those who have an aptitude for 

 them, or who expect to put them into practical use on their own 

 land. This knowledge is as necessary for the agriculturist to 

 protect himself from being swindled into the belief that he has 

 minerals of value on his land as to prevent his being cheated out of 

 valuable mineral property which he has. 



