276 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION B. 
advantage of a scientific education and its achievements, and it is 
a well known truth that the money paid to a mine manager of 
latter day attainments is grudged, whilst assayers and metallurgists 
are looked on as luxurious superfluities. 
Time and investors’ common-sense will put an end to idle 
superstitions such as these, and the hour is coming here, as it has 
done years since in America, where the practical miner takes 
second place to the educated man. All these truisms simply help 
me to say that Broken Hill has suffered in the past from such 
mistakes as these ; but the good sense of the old directors of the 
Proprietary Mine ‘asserted itself, and brought out to the country 
such men as Patton, Schlapp, and Howell, whose methods of 
mining and treatment of silver lead ores on a large scale are a 
standing object lesson to the Australian mining world. 
I do not propose, in this paper, to deal with the mining part of 
the question, but simply to take up the methods of ore treatment 
adopted at the Proprietary Mine, which practically describe the 
metallurgy of silver and lead in Australia. 
ORE TREATMENT. 
This will be described in the following order :—Blast-furnace 
smelting, lixiviation and chloridising, amalgamation and concen- 
tration. 
Smelting.—One great drawback to the smelting operations was 
the irregularity of the composition and value of the ore, and the 
absence of bedding floors at the furnaces, for the ore to be received 
in as it came from the mine, made this point more acute, and, 
together, have caused great monetary losses to all the companies 
who smelted their own ore. The following series of analyses of 
the smelting ores of the Broken Hill Proprietary Mine will show 
how the ores varied, and this variation took place not daily, but 
hourly, requiring constant care and attention to get the best work 
possible from the furnaces at the minimum of cost. 
Manganese Ironstone (used as flux). 
Bby/s Ag; ozs. Fe %. Mn %. CaO %. | AIIOR Shih SiO, Z%. 
7 3°00 15°0 21:0 “90 8°0 2°6 11-4 
15 4°0 14°4 PSSA MN <Bo0c0¢ 6°5 1°3 15°7 
20-0 2:0 14:0 DASE ONE ceiciiie’ | ooRa satel (ener 1l‘4 
19°0 3°0 11°4 a heal erences en pcocecom || .cousac 10°'8 
19:0 2:0 12°9 PAs wail mesonaser it edaeodo: © |. \so-opc 8°8 
31:0 1°40 3°10 OAS Berane | asacon "| sconbec 10°6 
17:0 2:0 17:0 PAAR | On oatete) wtW Meaodocn ||) cbdoc 11°0 
17'0 4:0 13°5 PO VEN Ta Gacrecm ||) matoose, ||) _cooncc 18-00 
