PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 739 



manufacture. There is a groove turned out at the top of the 

 barrel for the head to rest in. A 40 gallon barrel woiild cost 

 about two dollars. Petroleum barrels are made of seasoned white 

 oak, and would cost four dollars, while these can be made from 

 the green stock of any kind of wood. A man and two boys can 

 make a complete barrel in one hour and forty-five minutes. The 

 weight of these barrels are about 50 pounds each. A barrel of 

 this kind filled with oil was heated to 120 degrees and then 

 plunged into ice water, and no leakage was perceptible. The 

 wood used is known as scale board, and thirty thicknesses can be 

 cut to the inch. 



Dr. L. Feuchtwanger addressed the association on 



Gold — Its Sources and Origin. 

 About the year 1828, after the discoveries of gold and platinum 

 in Siberia, geologists declared that these metals belonged to the 

 older fossiliferous rocks, overlaid by secondary and tertiary 

 deposits. From a consideration of the gold found in the Urals, 

 Murchison supposed that the supply decreases as we descend. 

 This theory was again put forward when our El Dorado produced, 

 in 1849, over thirty millions. It was then maintained, that as 

 soon as the placer diggings should be exhausted, the gold must 

 diminish. We have, nevertheless, since obtained one thousand 

 millions of gold, and in the period immediately preceding the 

 report of 1866, about fifty-five millions, so that the yield is con- 

 stantly on the increase as we penetrate into the earth. Dr. Feucht- 

 wanger confessed he had been led into the same error on the 

 early Californian discoveries, for he held that all the alluvial 

 gold which came down the Sierra Nevad^ and filled the rivers 

 Stanislaus and St. Joachim, was brought down when a general 

 terrestrial revulsion took place at a very late period, and when, in 

 eastern Mexico a general tornado submerged several towns, like 

 Palenqua; also, that such revulsion took place in nearly one lati- 

 tude, or, in a line from San Diego, on the Pacific, in lat. 32*^ along 

 New Mexico, to the eastern portion of Mexico. In this opinion 

 he was partially confirmed ])y a report of Lieuts. Emory and Abert, 

 who stated that gold was so plentiful in Santa Fe that the child- 

 ren filled their quills with gold dust taken from the sands. He 

 now coincides with Dr. R. P. Stevens, that gold occurs in veins, 

 or rather, that gold, if found in veins, does not belong to one 



