141 
Ordinary Meeting, April 4th, 1876. 
Edward Sohunck, Ph.D., F.R.S., &c., President, in the 
Chair. 
Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., called the attention 
of the Society to the depreciation of silver which is now 
under the notice of a select committee of the House of 
Commons. It has been attributed to a panic, to the 
demonetisation of silver in Germany, or to the increased 
production of silver. In all probability all these causes 
have been in operation together. With regard to the 
last he had had the opportunity of examining a part of 
the silver mining district in Nevada last autumn, and 
he was very much impressed by the enormous mineral 
wealth of that region, which is as yet scarcely touched. In 
spite of the depression of trade, which was marked by the 
number of miners out of work, new localities are being dis- 
covered which will afford an almost inexhaustible supply of 
silver. To take an example. In June last a new lode 
was discovered in the range of metamorphic schists and 
slates about 1 2 miles from Battle Mountain, a station on the 
Central Pacific Railway, 519 miles from San Francisco. 
When he visited it in October it was nearly in working 
order, and at the present time is in full production. The 
lode runs N. and S. and outcropped on the surface of the 
ground, forming a vertical mass looking almost like a 
broken down wall in some places, and measuring 32 feet 
wide, the richer portions being of course irregular in thick- 
ness. 
Proceedings— Lit. & Phil. Soc.— Yol. XV.— No. 9.— Session 1875-6. 
