1845.] and Dhanpoor Copper mines in Gherwal. 473 



specimens of ore as would extinguish every doubt on the richness of the 

 mine ; then, and not before then, was the time to begin experiments ; 

 but also these ought to have been made in another way. Mr. Wilkin 

 could not prepare the ore on hearths and with sieves, as undoubtedly 

 he would have done, had there been more money at his command. 

 Furnaces on a scientific system instead of the rough native hearths 

 ought to be made, and these with powerful bellows put in regular 

 motion by water-wheels instead of two goat skins moved by hand. In 

 such fire-hearths, I saw in Dhanpoor two meltings, each continued 

 through about four hours, and from beginning to end the flames (4 to 5 

 feet high, and 3 to 5 feet diameter) were perfectly green from loss of 

 metal. The natives told me that such was the case in Pokree also ! 

 This shows that, 



1. The necessary preparations before the smelting could not be made. 



2. That the smelting was not properly conducted, the loss being too 

 great.* 



3. That the ore used was not the ore which would be the object of 

 mining on a large scale, it being impoverished by the slow metamor- 

 phosis of pyrites into sulphate of copper. 



It must be confessed, that the Pokree mines are highly wronged by 

 the conclusions made from results shown by any work done till now. It 

 could be objected against p. 3, that the presence of better ore or richer 

 ore, is only a supposition ; but it is not so ! I found in the Pokree bun- 

 galow a piece of hard rock talcose slate — with a high coloured pyrites 

 of copper, taken from the end of Mr. Wilkin's " Khan." The ore was 

 from a place where either no water came, or where it stood con- 

 stantly ; but all the pyrites from the first 30 or 40 yards had — so 

 said the natives — a greyish- watery colour. This shows that ore in the 

 bowels of the mountain is better preserved than on, or near the out- 

 side ; consequently more ore must be there, for it cannot be supposed 

 that an ore which for so many miles continues, and has so little thick- 

 ness, should not go, with the layer in which it occurs, to a considerable 

 depth at least. Analogy with thousands of cases leads to the supposi- 



* In a high furnace a large quantity of metal offers a nearly as little surface to the 

 wind as a small one. In a high furnace the ore is only exposed to the stream of 

 wind at the moment of melting, but in a hearth both ore and metal are constantly 

 exposed. 



