THE 



CANADIAN NATURALIST. 



SECOND SERIES. 



ON THE EXTRACTION OF COPPER FROM ITS ORES 

 IN THE HUMID WAY. 



By Thomas MacFarlane. 



Part II. — Being a continuation from page 231. 



In adverting to the best method of putting this process in prac- 

 tise, it may be well first to take into consideration the best means 

 of reducing the ore to powder. With such an ore as that of the 

 Capel mine, it will probably be found, that, after it has passed 

 through the operation of coarse spalling (by which it is reduced to 

 pieces of about six inches in diameter), it cannot be further concen- 

 trated by fine spalling and picking, without the loss of much of the 

 copper contained in the ore. (The waste from the fine spalling 

 operation at Capel mine contained 3.4 per cent copper.) Accord- 

 ing to experience gained at the Acton mine, lime-rock after coarse 

 spalling, can be reduced to pieces of 6J- inches in diameter (mixed 

 with much smaller pieces and dust) for 10 cents per ton of 

 2000 lbs., by means of Blake's stone breaker, that machine 

 reducing sixty tons of such rock in ten hours. The only crusher 

 which can at all compare with Blake's is that patented by J. J. 

 Storer and J. D. Whelpley of Boston, which breaks the rock so as 

 to go through holes of from three-fourths to one inch square ; but it 

 must be broken to a size of from three to four inches in diameter 

 before it is introduced into the crusher. It may therefore reasonably 

 be compared with Blake's. According to the inventors, Whelpley 

 and Storer's crusher will break up eight tons of ordinary quartz 



Vol. II. q No. 4. 



