Arizona republican., 1916-05-21
6be MINES of ARIZONA

tice in the other branches of metal state lie. presume. nanny Tn the sim pliclty of the reactions upon which the treatment depends. and largely, perhaps in the economic condition of the trade, which shows little progress during these years in comparison with that fthe other metals. The quick silver market has been held in com paratively few but strong hands of late years, and has suffered much from the lack of such stimulation as enlarged demands produce. A quicksilver trust has been mentioned. and upon it we may lay a good part of the blame for these adverse conditions. since. as we know the tendency of large producing and trading combinations is inimical to scientific progress.
 As before remarked, the extraction of mercury from its ores is effected by single operation, namely, distillation, by which it is transformed into the el emertary condition. converted into va per, and then. by the abstraction of heat, brought down in the liquid form in which we know it. How this is done and why this particular mode is adopted for the purpose will best ap- pear if we consider briefly the proper ties of the prevailing mercuriai com- pound. of the materials with which 1t i is most commonly associated. and of l the metal itself. The substances with 1 which il is associated in the mine have some bearing on the matter of reduc- l tion but they are not often of char ] acter to interfere, except by adding l 70 the cost of the operation. In no 1 case does the mercury combine with any of the constituents of he ore at 1 the moment of sublimation. The mat 1 riX of the ore (cinnabar) consists us- l ua!ly of altered country-rock. such as l sandstone, schist, serpentine, with oc- 1 casicnally some minerals of clearly 1 secondary origin, such as quartz 1 or chalcedony, calcite, dolomite, etc It is common also to find in the ore some sulphides other than that of mer- 1 cury; of these the most common is or dinary iron pyrite. a substance some what prejudiCial to the sublimatior 1 by heat and oxygen, and accompanies that of the cinnabar. Calrite and dol omite both decomposable by the heat at which the ore is worked, are re- solved into caustic bases of lime anC magresia, and are detrimental in tho sense that much heat is unavoidably
 expended Tn their decomposition. ! nl bat xRros
 the practice at certain European
 works, where the ore treated consisted
 of an evidently pure limestone or cal
 cite containing little quicksilver, tt
 collect the latter as a byAproduct il
 lime -burning-that is. the mercury in dustry was subsidiary to lime produc
 tiOn. This might very well be, a! quicksilver furnaces in many cases ar, purely lime-kilns in form. and worl
 as well on the one substance as on tn . other The only essential difference between a kiln devoted to lime burnin,
 and one built for the production o
 quicksilver consists in the apparatu , of condensation necessary for tn , latter.
 l. would be perfectly feasible t , combira the extraction of mercur with that of many other metals wit p which it might be associated, and thi . is done in several instances Zinc 2 olende, for example. being found { e contain in certain localities a sma 2 amount of mercury. this has been rt 2 covered from the fume set free i = roasting the blende preparatory to i
 distillation for zinc. lr a broader wa
 one might conceive of mercurial calci | and dolomite as the proper Aux f,
 silicious smelting ores, as of copp
 and lead. Further, as a silicious me
 curial ore would Aux basic lead al
 copper compounds. the question broa
 ems itself t3 include almost any ore
 either metal that is found in conve | tent relation to some other At one
 caiity in Hungary, tetrahedrite co | talnlng mercury up to r per cent
 mined, and the mercury saved, as
 tho copper. It does not appear, ho'
 ever that the saving of the former contingent upon smelting, since f
 practice is to roast the ore first. c
 idizing the metallic compounds, a - expeiling the quicksilver at once. T = interesting question of conoensi
 quicksilver from smelter- -fume d,
 not, therefore, receive illustrati from this source