The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-11-08
OLD THEORIES UPSET.
Biologists and Theoretical Miners
Given a Black Eve.


In speaking of the old style of min
ing according to fixed rules and ac-
cording TO theories laid down by theo-
retical biologists, the Denver Repub-
ican SAYS:
The existence of freaks in ore depo-
sition has long been recognized by
scientific men. and while those skilled
IN book 1arnin' have announced with
more or less assertiveness the geolog-
zeal conditions necessary for the pro
duction of gold, and the impossibilitv
OF finding the precious metals in GER
tam situations, the miner has come
along and quietly upset all theories by
producing the alleged impossibility.
w hen archaen rock is encountered.
mineral values cease used to be an
axiom among those who go down into
DOCKS for deep mining, but when a big
Pile OF granite taken out from a Grip
pie Creek excavation was sold to the
snelters for from $40 to $50 per ton. the
theory received a black eye from which
IL has not yet recovered and the
scientists were forced to assert that
the rock was not granite, though as
yet they have failed to give it any
other geological standing.
1t has been frequently assumed that
the conditions which produced telluri-
um We're so entirely different from
those which resulted in the deposition
of galena and sulphurets. that no two
OF the three We're ever found in COM
bi2atio,2. II REPUTATION of this theory
a find was made in Gilpin county re-
Gently in which tellurium, galena and
sulohides We're found in juxtaDosition
in the same ore body.
Galena has always been regarded as
a positive indication of silver. and no
gold was looked for in the presence of
strong veins of solid galena. This idea.
has been exploded recently by the dis
coVery IN Summit county of a vein of
galeHa ore, which carries no silver at
all, but is rich in gold.
1t has been repeated ad nauseam that
while gold may be found in sediment
airy and carbo2iferous deposits, it is
always in a free state. and is never
found in combination with other min
erals, and yet there is a coal mine in
Wyoming in which there are iron py-
rites carrying 81 to the ton of coal in
Sold-a value greater than that of the
coal delivered in Denver, and the own
ers are row endeavoring to find some
method of saving these gold values
1t has been accepted by miners since
the commencement of mining that
the gold carried in sulphurets is found
free in its natural state only when the
Sulphurets have been oXidized at the
surface. and that as depth is gained
the ore becomes refractory and can
only be extracted by chemical or
smelling processes, and now comes the
statement that in the Socorro mine. so
miles northwest Of Phoenix. Ariz.,
samples o. galena ore-lead sulphides
carry free gold, and this statement is
supplemented by the assertion that at
Bingham, Utah. there is a mine which,
showing sulphurets on the surface. be-
came a free milling proposition as
depth was gained
All OF these apparent contradictions
of accepted theories in mining only go
to show that the actual knowledge of
the processes of ore deposition is so
slight that very large book might be
written upon what the scientists don't
know.