The Madisonian. (Virginia City, Mont.) 1873-1915, 1896-04-18

"6~AAOO "
the reason that it will not dissolve over
80 per cent. of whatever silver is pres
ent in a ton of ore. This feature should
be borne in mind by all men who own
gold mines that have a small amount of
silver present.
For instance: A body of ore that
shows by assay $6 worth of gold and Sc
worth of silver per ton, the miner or
owner of such ore can depend upon ex-
tracing about S. worth of the gold and
about $3 worth of the silver. Vhe val
ue of the silver, of course, goes a long
ways towards the cost of the treatment
of a ton of ore, and in many instances
in this state will more than pay all the
costs for the treatment: thereby leav-
ing clear gain of whatever gold is
contained in the ore.
The presence of sulphur in the form
of pyrites must be eliminated by roast
ing the ore previous to the application
of the chlorine. This is no serious
drawback in the present advanced
state of metallurglcal appliances as the
Pierce-Turret roasting furnace will ell
inmate all the sulphur present, at a
cost of from between IS to IS cents per
ton; and all bodies of low grade ores
free from the deleterious metals men,
toned above, are applicable to the chic
rination method.
Tho cfof0ro ont fhof oh 1onS $f0N mill
be king in the treatment of gold ores in
the mining regions of the west will
bring about an extensive discussion
from the metallurgists of the country.
AS yet o n of the scientific writer's
have undertaken to make any close
comparisons as to costs per ton between
the use of cyanide and chlorine; nor
could this subject, up to the present
time, be treated with any degree of &C.
curacy for the reason that the applica-
ton of chlorine and cyanide for dis
solving gold is just emerging from its
infancy, and from nov on this question
can be settled, and the mining world re-
ceive the benefits of this information
between the c~hlorination method and
the cyanide method.
The mechanical part of the treat
ment of gold ores by these respective
methods, are SO nearly alike that a
great difference exists in the matter of
the percentage of extraction between
COLONIZATION and cyanide, which is
greatly in favor of chlorination. In
discussing this part of the questson I
shall use the language of the layman
so as to make it plain to all interested,
who are not familiar with m%etallurgi-
cal and chemical terms. In the first
place it must be borne in mind that the
application of COLONIZATION for the
treatment of gold ores, does not dis
criminate between the high and low
grade gold ore, and the extraction is
equally as good on all grades of ore:
while on the other hand the applica-
ton of cyanide is efficacious only in the
treatment of low grade gold ores. The
result so far obtained by pratical dem
O1lSUl dUlO1 udS OSUdOllo1lCu uulS ldCG.
An ore containing more than $15 worth
of gold per ton can be more proftably
treated by the COLONIZATION method,
than by the cyanide method, for the
reason that the extraction by the chic
rination method will be from 90 to SO
per cent, while the extraction by the
cyanide method will be from 80 to IS
per CEN. 1t will be observed that on a
SIS ore the c~hlorination method ex-
tracts on an average 10 per cent. more
gold than the cyanide method and this
10 per cent. of SIS dollars amounts to
$3.50 gain per ton; and as the ore to be
treated runs up in value, the amount of
money to be saved per ton of ore, by
the use of the c~hlorination method, in
creases proportionately.
On ores that have a value of from Sc
to SIS per ton the gain in extraction by
COLONIZATION is somewhat offset by the
cyanide method, for the reason that the
low grade ore can be treated in SOM
cases with cyanide, without the addi-
tional cost of roasting, as must invari-
ably be the case with all ores treated
by chlorination, as i, has been demon
strated fully that no ore can be treated
by the latter method without first sub
jecting the same to the roasting pro-
cess.
The raocoo