1888. ] 209 (DuBois. 
alloy of much smaller size. After this came the substitution of the bronze 
alloy ; and this called for another process of assay, and brought us a great 
deal of work.’’ 
_ Among the later improvements in process adopted by Prof. Booth was 
that of gold-refining. In his letter to the Wastage Commission he says ; 
‘‘T refine usually to 993 and 995 m. and sometimes, to make a finer gold, 
T heat the alloy of gold and silver with parting acid, so as nearly to sepa- 
rate them, and then heat the residue with oil of vitriol and saltpetre, at a 
steam heat, by which I have brought the gold to 998 m. The process is 
my own, and not known outside the Mint.” Ina paper read before 
the American Chemical Society and publisht in their Journal (Sept., 
1884), he describes some methods of toughening gold and silver. In the 
same publication (June, 1884), he describes ‘“‘A General Method of 
Toughening Gold and Silver in the Melting Crucible ;’ and in June, 1885, 
he printed, in the same Journal, an article on “The Smelting Furnace of 
the U. 8. Mint.’’ At the risk of, seeming too technical, I venture to quote 
a characteristic paragraph from the latter article. ““My last improve- 
ment, which is still practiced, consists in the very simple operation of 
melting all the iron residues from the furnaces, even including grate-bars, 
and keeping them in a quiet melted state, so as to allow the heavier gold 
and silver to settle out of the iron. When the mass is cold, the precious 
metal is knockt off the bottom by a hammer as a single tough king, with 
scarcely a trace of iron in it; while the iron mass above it has never 
yielded a trace of gold or silver to the assayer. Instead of spending three 
weeks, of annual vacation from melting, in hammering tons of accumu- 
lated iron, we now melt through the year, whenever convenient, from 
five to fifty pounds of iron residues at atime. We gathered in one melt- 
ing, last autumn, a cake of a few ounces of gold and silver from a mass of 
over fifty pounds of iron in part of a day, and the latter was entirely free 
from the precious metals. When I first succeeded with this process, I 
could hardly believe in the perfect separation from iron, and the late Mr. 
J. R. Eckfeldt, the best assayer in the United States, doubted it, until, by 
numerous tests made from a piece of some thirty pounds of iron, he found 
the total absence of gold and silver.’’ It is just to add that Prof. Booth 
was greatly aided by suggestions from his foreman, Mr. Garrigues, in per- 
fecting this process. 
Prof. Booth was a man of varied interests, and of large general culture. 
He was especially fond of linguistic studies ; and in this domain he long 
ago made a specialty of phonetics, particularly with reference to short- 
hand writing, and the reform of English orthography. He took up the 
study of Isaac Pitman’s Phonography, which he pursued with ardor until 
he mastered it. This of course was more of an achievement forty years 
ago than itis now. He formed the opinion that this art should be ac- 
quired as one of the elementary branches of education. In his judg- 
ment, an obstacle to that end lay in the unsatisfactory form of the books 
of instruction provided for the study. He therefore determined to prepare 
an elementary work designed to teach the art, and, in 1849, this was pub- 
