rington.] STREAM VOLUMES. 51 
Experiments on a single aperture of this form, used in determining 
Le North Bloomlield standard made by Hamilton Smith, jr., a gave a 
scharge (a mean of two different openings) of 302.7 cubic feet per 
inute, or 2,179.4 cubic feet per miner's inch in twent}^-four hours. 
The miner's inch used in this report is one two-hundredth part of 
te amount of water which will flow through an opening 12 inches 
gh by 12f inches wide in a l^-inch plank, under a constant head of 
inches above the top of the discharge. This may be taken for 
1 practical purposes as equivalent to 1.5 cubic feet of water per 
in iitc, or, in other words, 1 cubic foot per second equals 40 miner's 
ches. 
A simple means of ascertaining the approximate number of miner's 
ches in an open conduit is to select a straight portion of the ditch or 
ime where the water runs quietly and where no accelerated velocity 
is been imparted to it. One hundred and ten feet measured along 
le bank should be called 100 feet. Floats made by weighting empty 
irtridge shells with shot or small stones and fitting into them cylin- 
drical wooden plugs 4 or 6 inches long are then placed in the canal as 
lietly as possible. Note the average time which it takes several of 
iem to traverse the distance, divide the distance in feet by the aver- 
se time in minutes, and the result will be the velocity in feet per 
inute; this multiplied by the area in square feet will give the num- 
E of cubic feet of water flowing per minute. To get the number of 
iner's inches, multiply the cubic feet per minute by 2 and divide 
P3. 
California,^ Colorado, and Montana have, by State law, made the 
ifinitions shown below: 
Value of second-foot ( = cubic foot per second) in miner's inches. 
Miner's 
inches. 
lifornia 40. 
|lorado 38. 4 
^ntana 40. 
([The measure is of great value and should be defined by Federal law, 
slice at present it is used in an indefinite sense. The placer miner 
gnerally assumes, when he is buying water, that he is getting 1.5 
ethic feet per minute for each inch, or the inch measured under 6-inch 
bad above the top of the discharge, whereas, in reality, the inch sold 
hn is equal only to 1.2 cubic feet per minute, being measured under 
l|ead of 4 inches above the center of an orifice 2 inches wide/ 
Tydraulics, p. 282. 
[tover, A. P., California Journal of Technology, quoted in Eng. and Min. Jour., May 26, 1904. 
The legal definition of the miner's inch in use in the Yukon Territory, as given to the writer by 
MA. J. Beaudette, the Government mining engineer, is one-twelfth the amount of water that will 
g< lirough an orifice 2 inches high by 6 inches wide under a constant head of 6} inches above the 
ceer of the orifice. 
