738 Asiatic Society. [No. 140. 



II. During this examination, all questions relative to the facilities and difficulties 

 likely to attend on the working would be inquired into, and in India these are far 

 more than Europe, as the following enumeration of a few of them will shew : 1st, 

 healthiness or unhealthiness of the site ; 2d, possibility of obtaining workmen ; 3d, 

 of subsisting them; 4th, of erecting machinery, furnaces, and the like; 5th, fuel; 

 6th, drawing or pumping water ; 7th, general cost of bringing the ore to bank (i. e. to 

 the mouth of the mine ;) 8th, cost of preparing, smelting, and produce of the metal at 

 the furnace. 



III. Supposing the metal or ore to be thus obtained at a profitable rate, it has yet 

 to be taken to a market, and this involves all the questions $f road, carriages, ware- 

 housing and agency in Calcutta, and perhaps even freight, insurance, duties and sale 

 charges in England. 



From the foregoing then it will be seen, that we can recommend at the most but 

 a careful examination of the vein as an indispensable preliminary step ; but this I 

 should respectfully beg to do, because the locality being about the lines where the 

 granite and stratified formations meet is a favourable one ; because the appearance 

 of the ore is favourable ; and because it is really a question of much interest in a dis- 

 trict so little known, and so near to Calcutta, to determine what it may really prove 

 to be. I may mention, finally, that the matrix of the present specimen differs greatly 

 from the one formerly sent. There may evidently be half a dozen other valuable 

 mineral substances at this spot or near it, though considered as mere stones by 

 those unacquainted with them, One of the richest of the silver ores, for instance, 

 the muriate of silver, (not unfrequently found in company with such as the one 

 under examination,) would in all probability be thought a worthless stone. 



I have the honor to be, Sir, 



Your obedient Servant, 



H. PlDDINGTON, 



28t/i July, 1843. Curator Museum of Economic Geology. 



P. S. In illustration of the closing remark of this report, that valuable ores of Silver 

 (as of many other minerals) may easily be passed over as worthless stones, I beg 

 to quote from Professor Jameson's Mineralogy, vol. iii. p. 75. 



" In some parts of Mexico, however, as we are informed by Mr. Humboldt, the 

 operations of the miner are directed to a mixture of ochry brown Iron ore and 

 minutely disseminated native Silver.* This ochreous mixture, which is named Pacos 

 in Peru, is the object of considerable operations at the mines of Angangneo in the 

 intendancy of Valladolid, as well as at Yxtapexi in the province of Oaxaca."t 



I am fortunately enabled to exhibit to the Society from my own collection, about 

 twenty specimens of silver ores of various kinds, but mostly such as shew little or no 

 appearance of metal, and several are the true Pacos from Peru, the inspection of 

 which will at once convince the most sceptical of this curious fact. Humboldt in- 

 deed adds, that a very large proportion of the silver of Mexico and South America 

 * Of muriate of silver also.— H. P. 

 t Pacos, according to Klaproth, contains Silver, 14 



Brown Oxide of Iron, 71 



Silica, sand, -water, &c 13 



