Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1922-04-28
MINING EXPERT TELLS
 OF HEAVY GOLD LOSS

OF HEAVY GOLD LOSS.
 A recent issue of the New York Herald contained story by one E. c. Holland dealing with the gold bear ing qualities of the Colorado river. MT. Holland stated that recent exper- iments of the federal assay office at New York, which has been working on a process to recover gold "from gas and smoke", and which has caus- ed the adoption of the Cottrell pro- cess, lead him to look into the great losses suStained by the country in wastes, such as in the manufacture of jewelry, mining operations and in other ways. The waste in pining operations, said MT. Holland, Ire suits in between $50, 100000 and $10O,- 000,000 worth of gold particles being dumped into the Gulf of California annually:
 Although operators declare that they save 95 per cent. or more gold, in the twenty years have spent in testing waste waters from mines throughout this and foreign countries, I have yet to find a stamping, anal gamating or concentrating plant that saves 70 per cent. We have any num- Der of cyanide plants, which never saved more than S2 per cent. of the gold.
 Gravel Full of Gold
 "The amount of gold swept down the Colorado River is so great that it is impossible for a practical pan ner to find yard of ground on either side of it's banks, in it's bed, or on its bars, for distance of a hundred miles from the mouth of the Grand Canyon to Arizona that will not pan from 20 cents to $2 or better yard" MT. Holland continued: "You can locate hundred places on the river where you, can obtain water carrying from cents to cents in gold values in 10 pounds of silt. Silt ore recovered is worth $10 ton. And I believe it is fair to assume that more gold values are dumped into the Gulf of California than are taken from all the mines in the United States.
 "The gold loss in the manufacture of jewelry is also tremendous. A small device that 1 have in operation in plant has been saving gold dust worth approximately $40 a'pound for the last five years. An optical plant in Western Massachusetts paid for the construction of a new and larger fac tory by recovering sufficient gold from the burning of the timbers in the original plant.
 Another example of the waste is the story of an employee of Newark factory who receives as much as $500 year from a smelter plant for the gold he recovers after washing down the stairs every Sunday morning. In addition I have personally seen a couple of bricks knocked out of an old chimney in a jewelry establish ment in this city yield handfuls of gold dust worth $90 a pound"
 Mir. Holland goes on to state that the government will not estimate the amount of gold that will be saved by the new process, but that it will be great. Of course, it is well known that the loss in smelting gold is not at all serious, and the loss in assay ing is small. Melts are made in closed crucibles and only when there is excess heat does any part of the metal vaporize. A report of the di- rector of the mint will disclose small yearly losses in the handling of gold, which is much less than results in the turning over of the gold bars in the treasury.
 Just how the losses going to the Gulf results from milling processes is not quite plain, although there is un- doubtedly considerable gold on its way yearly by way of the Colorado river. Yet, practically all the gold that moves down the river is dropped along the coursea only a very smal amount reaching the gulf. The Colo rado river drains a learge area gold bearing territory and erosio1 brings into the tributaries a largC