136 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



stances which volatilize in heavy vapors that may carry oflP, mechan- 

 ically, fine particles of metals whose recovery is sought. As an 

 illustration of this, I have here an ore from a mine in Arizona which 

 carries a large body like this specimen. It shows readily to the eye 

 crystals of the sulphides of zinc and lead. The larger of these con- 

 stituents is the blende, which prevents wholly the recovery of lead in 

 a fire assay, although by the wet method ten per cent, or more of lead 

 is found. Likewise, the fire assay of this ore fails to show more than 

 one dollar per ton of gold. By pulverizing and washing, however, 

 the galena may be largely separated from the blende, and now, by the 

 fire assay, the residual galena will show eighty dollars per ton of gold, 

 or about ten dollars of gold per ton on the whole mass of ore. 



Now, this shale contains some five to ten per cent, of hydrocarbons 

 of the asphalt-petroleum order. It also always contains a quantity of 

 zinc, which varies much in difPerent specimens. 



I attribute to these volatile constituents of the shale much of the 

 discordance in our results, although the gold may also be very irregu- 

 larly distributed. 



During the past year I have had occasion to test other specimens 

 of Kansas minerals for gold and silver. My results tend to confirm 

 the belief that gold is one of the most universally distributed of all 

 the metals. I have examined shales from quite a number of localities 

 and found a little gold in a good many instances, but not generally so 

 much from other places as from that which is found along the Smoky 

 river. I have found some gold in the sand from several places in 

 western Kansas, and in pyritic rocks, wherever they occur, gold is 

 likely to be a constituent. This "fool's gold" still leads many people 

 to think they have discovered a gold mine. The assays from these 

 rocks vary from blanks to as much as ^fty dollars per ton, but in none 

 of these cases have I yet found evidence of such ore in quantity giv- 

 ing it a commercial value. The rocks from the blufl^s up the river 

 from the Rock Island depot have some gold, and in selected speci- 

 mens from what may be called pockets in these rocks I have found 

 good values. Many of the glacial rocks in this vicinity have been 

 found to contain gold, and some have thought it possible that some 

 time extensive gold deposits may be found along these old glacial 

 moraines. 



One of the latest of gold deposits to which my attention has been 

 called is situated two and one-half miles north of Wamego. This lo- 

 cality is one of those which has lately been considered a promising 

 place to explore for oil, gas, or coal. I was asked to inspect a shaft 

 which has been sunk twenty-five feet deep within about fifty feet of 

 Rock creek, a little stream along whose bed are the outcroppings of a 



