then so accessible a place as it is now, and got closely correct results
from a number of different mines, with an extemporised plant almost
amusing in its simplicity. All I took from Adelaide were a small set of
scales capable of determining the weight of a button down to 20 ozs. to
the ton, a piece of cheese cloth to make a screen or sieve, a tin ring
1 1/2 in. diameter, by 1/2 in. high, a small brass door knob to use as
a cupel mould, and some powdered borax, carbonate of soda, and argol
for fluxes; while for reducing lead I had recourse to the lining of a
tea-chest, which lead contains no silver--John Chinaman takes good care
of that. My mortar was a jam tin, without top or bottom, placed on an
anvil; the pestle a short steel drill. The blacksmith at Mundi Mundi
Station made me a small wrought iron crucible, also a pair of bent tongs
from a piece of fencing-wire. The manager gave me a small common red
flower pot for a muffle, and with the smith's forge (the fire built
round with a few blocks of talcose schist) for a furnace, my plant was
complete. I burned and crushed bones to make my bone-dust for cupelling,
and thus provided made nearly forty assays, some of which were
afterwards checked in Adelaide, in each instance coming as close as
check assays generally do. Nowadays one can purchase cheaply a very
effective portable plant, or after a few lessons a man may by practice
make himself so proficient with the blowpipe as to obtain assay results
sufficiently accurate for most practical purposes.

Coming then to the actual work of prospecting. What the prospector
requires to know is, first, the usual locality of occurrence of the more
valuable minerals; secondly, their appearance; thirdly, a simple mode
of testing. With respect to occurrence, the older sandy and clay slates,
chlorite slates, micaceous, and hornblendic schists, particularly at or
near their junction with the intrusive granite and diorite, generally
form the most likely geological country for the finding of mineral