1885 .] 
Analyses of Books. icn 
we learn that above three millions of British capital have been 
fruitlessly spent, the author passes on to the other reputed 
auriferous districts of Asia. The produce of China and Japan 
he estimates at about £750,000 sterling yearly, and points out 
that as the people of those empires are very skilful in gold- 
finding and washing, the probability of any important deposits 
having escaped them is not great. 
I he yield of the Russian empire shows a gradual, steady 
decline. The net produce in 1877 was only £661,500, and since 
then it has continued to fall off. 
Africa still yields about £1,300,000 annually, Here, also, 
there is every probability that the richest alluvials have been 
ransacked and washed out. The different regions of South 
America have been at one time enormously productive ; but now 
they, for the most part, exhibit the same picture as the Wynaad 
and the auriferous districts of Siberia. During the (approxi- 
mately) two centuries from 1691 to 1884 Brazil has yielded gold 
to the extent of £150,000,000; its present output is under a 
quarter of a million. New Grenada and Venezuela yield about 
£200,000 yearly. Mexico, too, has greatly fallen off. 
Even California, Nevada, and certain adjacent States of the 
North American Union, which in the thirty years from 1849 to 
1879 contributed £327,000,000 to the world’s stock of gold, are 
not now as productive as in those days. In 1881 the output of 
all the States combined had fallen to £4,700,000, with a prospeCt 
of further decline. In British North America the production of 
gold has often been close upon a million yearly, but is now 
falling off. In Australia the yield does not reach the half of its 
quantity in 1867. 
In short, our author sums up the total yield of gold throughout 
the known world at £14,000,000, and this with little or no tan- 
gible prospeCt of increase. It is further shown that of this 
small yearly total £9,000,000 are consumed in jewellery, gilding, 
&c., and that no small portion is, especially in America, buried 
with the dead in the fastenings of artificial teeth. Thus for the 
purposes of commerce there remains only the relatively small 
sum of £5,000,000. 
To meet this evil the author proposes the adoption of a bi- 
metallic currency, or, in other words, the recognition of silver as 
a legal tender. We are no commercial or economical authority, 
but to us his arguments seem sound and his proposal eminently 
judicious. He points out the significant faCt that the epoch of 
the profuse gold yield in California and Australia, from 1849 to 
1879, was a time of unexampled commercial prosperity, — a time 
when national prosperity was increasing by “ leaps and bounds.” 
On the other hand, the present stagnation of trade, whatever 
other causes may concur, is certainly connected with a falling off 
in the supply of that metal which the modern world has chosen 
for its sole circulating medium. 
