1877. ] The Philosopher's Stone. o oF 
phides in the gold, as determined by over thirty carefully made 
assays, was about ten dollars per ton, the selections for assay 
being made from such material as seemed nearest to a state of 
repose. 
Wherever decomposition had occurred in the deposit, the yield 
of gold increased at a large ratio. One bushel of the decom- 
posed sulphides, consisting of oxides and gangue, produced, as the 
writer was informed, over eighteen hundred dollars; this was 
said to have been found in a small cavity formed in the vein from 
the decomposition of the sulphides. An examination of the 
specimen containing the gold shows that the decomposition .of 
the sulphides to form the cell has been in proportion to about 
nine times the bulk of the gold and oxide occupying the cell. 
Careful examination was made of some twenty tons of this ore, 
to see if any free gold existed in the sulphides, apart from the 
evidence of decomposition. This ore was all broken up, and a 
close inspection failed to find any such appearance within it. 
All the quartz veins containing gold in the absence of the sul- 
phides, and as occurring in some parts of California and Montana, 
are of a more recent formation than the others, and if the gold 
so existing be examined with care, it will be found to contain 
unmistakable evidences of being water-worn, as if it had been lib- 
erated from an older matrix, and had been washed into the crev- 
ice with the silicious solution which filled it. Another fact 
favoring this deduction is that where such veins dip, the gold is 
nearly all found at the foot wall, and the quartz upon the upper 
inclined side of the vein is barren. 
Amongst other specimens shown to sustain the hypothesis is 
a piece of baryta or heavy spar. This contains a large nodule 
of oxide of iron, with a trace of its former existence as a sulphide 
present in it. The oxide is full of gold, yet there is none in the 
baryta apart from this connection with the oxide of iron. : 
A very interesting form of gold is taken from a vein of tough 
ferruginous aluminous clay existing in various parts of the South- 
ern States. The gold in this deposit is very singularly aggre- 
gated, and the metal is not at all worn by attrition, like alluvial 
gold, but appears in the form of threads, nodules, and cubes, some = 
of the threads being very delicately joined, as if made where 
it was found and never disassociated from the old connection of 
the sulphides in the way of the oxidized skeletons of a former 
crystallization. Masses weighing five pounds have been found in 
this deposit. Dr. James Crump, of Montgomery County, North 
