14 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[VOL. IT. 
Colonel H aught on says—“The Gassees can always reckon on earning from three to four 
pice per day. and I am assured that a vigorous man often gets as much as twelve annas, 
which, as the ordinary rate of field labour is about one pice, must be considered a very large 
sum.”* 
Mr. Robinson found in a trial which ho made at Roliobe in Oodipur, that men to 
whom he paid one anna could produce for him from threo to four annas worth of gold. 
Colonel Dalton states that the washers themselves regard it as a very poor trade, simply 
yielding they say pit bur (bellyful). 
Dr. fettehr in his paper on feinghbhum states that he found the average daily earning 
to be about 25 centimes (rather more than an anna and a half). 
The men I met with stated that they could earn about an anna a day and occasionally 
three or four annas. 
Taking into consideration the manner in which the gold is distributed through the 
superficial deposits of those districts, it would seem that the system of hydraulic mining, 
at present practised in California, is the one which would be most likely to be successful. 
In. ;l recently published accountf of that system we leai'n that there is a company in 
California which supplies water to the miners at such a moderate rate that “ 350 miner’s 
inches ol water, with a head of ICO feet, will remove and wash 4,000 tons of gravel per 
diem, leaving a small profit on the working of stuff affording gold to the value of only three 
half peneo per ton.” 
In parts of the districts under consideration it would be hopeless to expect to obtain 
a. constant and sufficient supply of wafer with the necessary head-way: but there must be 
many places at the bases of the plateaux which rise towards the west, where the conditions 
would he peculiarly favourable. During the rains the number of such places would of coarse 
be vastly increased. 
simplest idea of this process, which seems so nearly to approach to perfection in 
California, is not, however, altogether unknown to the natives, Mr. Robinson saysj— 
* Another plan and a very remarkable one in which the people collect the gold is by drawing up 
small watercourses before the rains, so as to make places for a deposit of soil carried down 
by the water; this soil is cleared out several times and in it is found a large deposit of gold.” 
In the shallow diggings the hydraulic system would not of course be applicable, but even 
in them an increased field would undoubtedly result from supplanting the native’s disli by 
the Californian pan, rocker, long-tom and sluice. 
September, 1868. 
Memorandum on the wells now being sunk at the European Penitentiary, 
ANB AT THE SITE FOB. THE CENTRAL JaIL, HaZAREEBAGH, by H. B. MeDLICOTT, 
P. G. S., Geological .Survey of India. 
1. All the rocks of Ilazareebagh are of the most extreme metamorphic type, and are 
besides very irregularly arranged. It will, therefore, be at once understood that a question 
of water-supply, in which these rocks are concerned, is altogether beyond those simpler cases 
where a study of the sections might enable a Geologist to give an approximate positive 
judgment upon the source of water in any given position. The independent method 
being thus not applicable, I had to trust to the discussion of existing local experience, and 
the comparison ol' tills with the special cases proposed, with the following results. 
2. Hassareebagli is on an undulating upland. There is nowhere any strictly level 
ground; but the tops of the ridges are generally very Hat, and the slopes very gentle. It 
* J. A. S. B., 1851, p. 109. 
t Quar. Journal of Science, XIX, July 1868. 
t J. A. S. 13., 1851, p. 108. 
