Ball — On Zinc and Zinc Ores. 323 



as a tin ! mine, and this statement has led Lassen 1 and others to 

 conclude that in early times tin was produced in the peninsula of 

 India itself ; but we are not at present justified in believing that 

 there was at any time a largely- worked source of tin in that 

 country, and we are therefore driven to the conclusion that all the 

 tin exported from Indian ports was first brought to them from 

 Tenasserim or the Malayan Peninsula and its islands. 



This mine is at Jawar or Zawar, in the Udepur State of Raj- 

 pootana. Tod states that the annual revenue derived from it 

 amounted to a sum exceeding £20,000 (222,000 rupees) ; so that 

 the produce must have been considerable, and independently the 

 extent of the excavations points to the same conclusion. 



The mine of Dureeba, or Daribo, which Tod also mentions as a 

 tin mine, yielding a revenue of 80,000 rupees, was, it is believed, a 

 copper mine. 



The ores at Jawar, so far as is known, consist of the carbonate 

 or Smithsonite, 3 and argentiferous galena, but no traces of tin 

 ore have been met with, nor is there any local tradition of tin ever 

 having been produced there. The including rocks are believed to 

 be quartzites of the Arvali group of the transition series. 



The following account is derived from a Paper published in the 

 year 1850 by Captain Brooke, who acquired most of his informa- 

 tion from one of the native miners, still living on the spot, who 

 had worked in the mines before the famine of 1812-13, when they 

 were closed. He described the ore as occurring in veins three or 

 four inches thick, and sometimes in bunches, in quartz rock. The 

 pure ore, being very friable, was pounded, freed from quartz, and 

 placed in crucibles some eight or nine inches high and three 

 inches in diameter, with necks six inches long and half an inch in 

 diameter. Into these necks the metal sublimed on the applica- 

 tion of heat in the following manner : the mouths being fastened 

 up, the crucibles were inverted and placed on a charcoal furnace. 

 It took three or four hours to complete the fusion of the ore. It is 



1 Lassen, Indisch Alt., vol. i. p. 232, was, however, aware that zinc occurred in 

 India, as he refers to Captain Brooke's Paper, quoted below. 



2 Much confusion exists, owing to the application of the term calamine to both 

 the hydro-silicate and the carbonate. See Dana's Mineralogy on this subject of 

 nomenclature. 



Z2 



