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By HORACE V. WlNCHELL

Location. THE St. Helens mining-district, indicated in sketch-map, Fig. 1, is chiefly in Townships 9 and 10 North, Ranges 5 and 6 East, of the Willamette meridian, in Skamania county, Wash. There is no railroad or even a wagon-road at present connecting it with any base of supplies; access is usually by wagon-road for FIG. I.-SKETCH-MAP OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON. about 50 miles from the town of Castle Rock to Spirit lake, and from that point by pony-trail from 6 to 10 miles farther. History. Nearly 20 years ago two German farmers, totally inexperienced in prospecting, penetrated this region upon a hunting and fishing-trip. Their attention was drawn to numerous joints and crevices filled with black, glistening tourmaline, and con-

Oct 1, 1912

By IRVING H. WENTIVORTII

(New York Meeting, February, 1912.) THE little town of San Nicolás, Tamaulipas, Mexico, lies approximately 60 miles east of Linares, situated in the State of Nuevo Leon, and 150 miles SE. of Monterey, as shown in the sketch-map. Fig. 1. The place is reached from Monterey by the Tampico train as far as Linares, a distance of 92 miles, and then by coach the rest of the way. It is situated in a narrow valley between low hills, the houses forming one main street and a plaza. It is peopled by about 500 inhabitants. The climate is temperate, the thermometer ranging from 90° in summer to a few degrees below freezing-point in winter; but this severe weather only lasts a day or two at a time, when the " northers " blow. There are no streams in the vicinity, but water sufficient for the use of the people is obtained from wells. The rainfall is about the same as that in the rest of NE. Mexico. The rainy months are July, August, and September. The rest of the year is practically dry, with an occasional showery day or two during the winter, when a " norther " is blowing. Timber is abundant in many localities. There are two varieties of oak, besides mesquite, ebony, "maguira," "patol," and a number of other kinds of trees indigenous to this region. I. HISTORY. On the discovery of the silver-lead hearing veins occurring in this district, the mining-camp of San Nicolás was founded in 1767 by the Spaniards, and numerous mines were opened and worked for a distance of abort 3 miles east and 5 miles west of the town. At the western extremity and near the Carrolena mine, a small town called San Pedro was built. The ruined walls of the houses form a single street, and all is over-

Aug 1, 1912

By N. H. Emmons

(Canal Zone Meeting, November, 1910.) AN interesting development of copper blast-furnace construction has been brought about in adapting the blast-furnace to be a "burner" for sulphuric acid making. When the Tennessee Copper Co. first decided to construct an acid-plant, the standard type of brick-top furnace, supported by structural steel, was the only one in use at this plant. All the tests for temperature and strength of gas had been made on these furnaces, and had been satisfactory. When, however, the acid-plant was put on the flue, and the flue had to have a damper put in it to force the gas into that plant, troubles began. The furnaces were fairly tight, and for a few months the work was quite satisfactory., Fig. 1 shows the old type of furnace-top used at the start. It was soon found that this top would not stand the temperatures, particularly when dampered back, as was necessary to force the gas into the Glover towers. The structural steel, of which the furnace skeleton was constructed, warped and twisted so badly that it was not safe to use the furnaces. This effect is shown by Fig. 2, which is a photograph of old No. 4 furnace, after the brick-work had been removed. It became apparent that a new type of top was necessary and the engineering force was started oil the design of a new furnace-top, with the result that a low top, with brick-lined flues at each end below the feed-floor, leading to the main concrete dust-chamber, was constructed. This furnace, No. 7, is shown in Fig. 3. The charging-doors are made of cast-iron sections, three sections to a door, and three doors to a side. A door to the furnace was made of cast copper, but the heat was so great that the copper bent readily, due to the jarring of its * General Manager, Tennessee Copper Co.

Feb 1, 1911

By Ernst F. Eurich

(Cleveland Meeting, October, 1912.) ALEXANDER PARKES patented in England in 1851-52-53 a process for desilvering lead by means of zinc, making use of the greater affinity of silver for zinc than for lead, discovered by Karsten in 1842. The efforts in England to develop it commercially were not particularly successful, nor was the attempted introduction into the United States. This last was not surprising, as it was about the beginning of our Civil War, and at that period there was very little lead-bullion produced in the united States and there was no field for the process here. There was at that time on Staten Island an establishment that pattisonized lead, probably from Rossie, N. Y., and Chester, Pa., and possibly some Spanish lead, but the production of lead-bullion in the Far West had not yet begun. In 1864, Edward Balbach, of Newark, N. J., patented in this country a process for desilvering lead by means of zinc, and in 1867 Edward Balbach, Jr., patented a " movable black-lead retort with a neck, placed in a furnace," for the purpose of distilling the alloy of zinc, lead, and the precious metals. A brief comparison of the Parkes and the Balbach processes is interesting. The Parkes process as practiced in England consisted in stirring into silver-bearing lead, melted in a kettle, from 1 to 2 per cent. of zinc, cooling, skimming the alloy of lead, zinc, and silver that rose to the surface, liquating it in an iron retort, distilling the residual rich alloy in fire-clay retorts, thus regaining the zinc, and refining the desilvered lead at a low heat in a shallow cast-iron pan that formed the hearth of a reverberatory furnace. If the lead was too impure, it was first softened * Presented also at the Joint Meeting of the Institute and Section IIIa, Metal¬lurgy and Mining, of the Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry, New York, September, 1919, and here published by mutual agreement.

Dec 1, 1912

By AIME AIME

COUNCIL PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL. CHARLES KIRCHHOFF NEW YORK, N. Y. (Term expires February, 1912.) VICE-PRESIDENTS OF THE COUNCIL. BENJAMIN B. LAWRENCE NEW YORK, N. Y. JOSEPH W. RICHARDS SOUTH BETHLEHEM, PA. ALBERT SAUVEUR CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (Term expires February, 1912.) S. B. CHRISTY BERKELEY, CAL. W. A. LATHROP PHILADELPHIA, PA. GARDNER F. WILLIAMS WASHINGTON, D. C. (Term expires February, 1913.)

Oct 1, 1911

By AIME AIME

The XCVIIth meeting of the Institute for the reading and discussion of papers will be held at Spokane, Wash., beginning Monday, Sept. 27, 1909, as already announced in Special Circulars of May 8 and Aug. 14, 1909, and in the Bulletins for June, July, and August. The meeting will be preceded by a tour through Yellow stone Park and visits to Butte and Anaconda, and will be followed by visits to the Coeur d'Alene district, to the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition at Seattle, to the mining- and smelting-plants near Salt Lake, and to the iron- and lead- and zinc-plants at Pueblo. The special train for the party' will leave Chicago, September 16, and return about October 12. Details of the itinerary are given later in this announcement. The Secretary of the Spokane Local Committee is Lyndon K. Armstrong, 615 Hyde Block, Spokane, Wash., to whom should be addressed all inquiries concerning local matters. The control of the papers and proceedings will remain in charge of the Institute office, as usual. It is greatly to be desired, both in behalf of the Institute and in recognition of the many courtesies to be extended on the trip, that the excursion party be made larger. Exceptional facilities to visit the many mines and smelters have been freely provided; and members are requested to make all reasonable effort to attend the meeting at Spokane and participate in the excursions. For those who cannot join in the entire trip, it may be possible to provide special Pullman accommodations after leaving Yellowstone Park. In order to make the necessary arrangement, however, the names of members and guests contemplating this partial trip should be sent at once to Theodore Dwight, 29 West 39th Street, New York City. The general cost of the trip per member will be $300, which includes transportation, berth, and meals for the entire trip from

Sep 1, 1909

By Leon Dominian

(Wilkes-Barre Meeting, June, 1911.) I. INTRODUCTION. THE lack of Aryan roots for the names of metals commonly known among the Aryan settlers of Asia Minor, as well as the later colonizers of Europe, indicates that these races were generally ignorant of the use of metals until they came into contact with Semitic peoples. Practically all mining-terms in current use among the earliest Greeks resemble very strongly their distinctly Semitic equivalents, which can be traced all the way in a broad belt beginning in Lower Mesopotamia, and extending westwardly to the Syrian shores of the Mediterranean. The Greek word " "metallon," for instance, used indiscriminately to designate mine or ore, probably came from the earlier Semitic equivalent, " matal." Again, the Greek words " chrysos " (gold) and " chalkos " (copper) seem to be descended from the Semitic forms " throats " and a chalak." It is a natural inference that primitive mining-methods were evolved by the dwellers in the mineralized areas of Asia Minor, from whom later Greek, Roman, and even North European miners obtained their first notions of the reduction of metallic ores, by virtue of a general westward migration of mining and metallurgy. Some traces of its passage through Turkish territory will be noted in this paper. While European Turkey can boast of one ancient gold-field, the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan may lay claim to at least two well-defined and widely-separated gold-producing districts. These three regions may be distinguished as the Thracian, the Pontic, and the Anatolian gold-fields. II. TURKEY IN EUROPE. . The Thracian Gold-Field. The most conspicuous topographic feature of the lowland between Constantinople and Salonica is the uplifted Archaean

Nov 1, 1911

By E. C. Reed

Drilling activity in Nebraska during 1945 continued to decline slightly over that of the previous year. Eight tests for oil and gas were completed during the year, of which seven were wildcats and resulted in dry holes. The eighth test, an inside location in the Dawson field of Richardson County, yielded an initial production of about 3o bbl. per day with 86 per cent water from the Hunton formation. Five wells were drilling at the end of the year, two of which were wildcats. Two of the drilling wells were deepening operations in the Dawson and Falls City fields and the third was an inside location in the Falls City field, which appears likely to result in a producer. Most of the operations were in Richardson County but two wells were drilled in Dawes and Gage Counties and one each was drilling in Holt and Washington Counties at the end of the year. There were no new discoveries of oil or gas.

Jan 1, 1946

By AIME AIME

Adjustable Pyrometer-Stand. By L. W. BAHNEY, xxxvii, 33. Agency of Manganese in the Superficial Alteration and Secondary Enrichment of Gold-Deposits in the United States. By WILLIAM H. EMMONS, xlvi, 767. Application of Descriptive Geometry to Mining-Problems. By JOSEPH W. ROE, xxxix, 173. ARNOLD, C. EVERARD. The Giroux Shaft at Kimberly, Nev., xlii, 461. BAHNEY, L. W. An Adjustable Pyrometer-Stand, xxxvii, 33. BALL, SYDNEY H., and SHALER, MILLARD K. Mining-Conditions in the Belgian Congo, xxxix, 253. BEALS, ROGER L., and TWEEDY, GEORGE A. Cyanide-Plant and Practice at the Minas del Tajo, Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico, xxxviii, 123.

Dec 1, 1910

By AIME AIME

A SPECIAL meeting arranged by the Petroleum and Gas Committee of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers was held on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 21 and 22, in the Assembly Room of the American Annex Hotel, St. Louis, Mo. Preceding the first session on Tuesday morning, the members and guests were registered and presented with the usual Institute badges. The morning session was opened at 10:30 by Ralph Arnold of Los Angeles, Calif., Chairman of the Petroleum and Gas Committee. In his opening remarks, he suggested that the petroleum section specialize more and more on the technical problems of the oil industry and that an effort be made to enlarge the membership of the Institute among the technical men of the industry. The following program was presented : OIL FIELDS OF RUSSIA, by A. Beeby Thompson and T. G. Madgwick, of London, England. Presented by H. A. Wheeler; discussed by Arthur Knapp and R. VanA. Mills. This most comprehensive paper was one of what is hoped to be a series to be presented by some of our foreign members. It is by far the best description in English of the world-famous Baku and other fields of Russia.

Jan 1, 1920

By AIME AIME

THE following Officers, Directors, and guests were present: Herbert Hoover, A. R. Ledoux, Henry S. Drinker, Edwin Ludlow, Samuel A. Taylor, Charles F: Rand, William M. Corse, Arthur S.. Dwight, Glen H. Clevenger, L. W. Francis, F. G. Cottrell, Bradley Stoughton, Percy E. Barbour, E. P. Mathewson, Dorsey A. Lyon, Archibald Douglas, A. D. Flinn, RobertLinton, James F. Kemp, William Y. Westervelt, J. W. Richards, W. L. Saunders, George Otis Smith, Thomas T. Read, J..C. Murray, Ralph Arnold. A Committee on Mine Equipment was appointed composed as follows: Graham Bright, chairman, William Kelly, Howard N. Eavenson, R. E. Hobart, and S. P. Rumsey. B. D. Saklatwalla was added to the Committee on Miscellaneous Metals and W. Spencer Hutchinson was added to the Committee on Mining Geology. A revised budget for 1921 was approved. A petition duly signed to amend Section 1., of Article III of the Constitution, increasing the initiation fees from ten dollars to twenty dollars, was approved by the Board.

Jan 1, 1920

By Fred J. Miller

FRED J. MILLER was born in Ohio, in 1857. He had a common and high school education, supplemented by personal study and special instruction. After serving a 4-year apprenticeship and working in various capacities in machine shops, he became a contributor to mechanical journals and finally a member of the editorial staff of The American Machinist, where he remained for twenty years, the last ten years as editor-in-chief of the magazine, and vice-president of the publishing company. On retiring from journalism, he was for nine years general manager of a group of typewriter factories, and was then commissioned Major of Ordnance in the U. S. Army, being stationed during most of his service at Rock Island Arsenal, where he organized the Civilian Service Division of the Arsenal. He is now a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the War Claims Board at Washington. Major Miller became a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1890, and has always taken an active interest in its affairs, having served on a number of important committees, and as a member of Council from 1904 to 1907, inclusive. He was elected President in December, 1919.

Jan 1, 1920

By J. W. R. Rayner

THE conventional method of making water gas involves individual plants for the separate carbonization of coal to coke and the subsequent gasification of coke with steam. The process demands lump coke, preferably made from the best quality of coking coals. The ash in the coke should have a high melting point and the gasification process suffers a loss of efficiency when cokes with low ash-melting points are used. In Britain, these coals are generally the most expensive and they are readily available only in certain localities. The coals not suitable for making lump coke, or yielding only poor quality coke, are much more widely available and are generally cheaper. DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVE PROCESSES In Germany, processes have been developed and operated commercially for the production of water gas from very low-rank coals such as brown coal and lignites, but much less effort has been spent on processes to use coals of intermediate rank, which are widely available in Britain. The brown-coal processes use coal in the form of either dust or briquettes. The most successful of the dust-gasification methods is the Winkler process, which made a substantial contribution to German oil production during the war. It uses coal in the size range 0 to 8 mm and the fuel bed is blown with a mixture of oxygen and steam at a rate high enough to give it a characteristic boiling motion or, in present-day phraseology, at a rate more than sufficient to fluidize it (Fig. 1). Air cannot be used to provide the heat required for gasification, for vari¬ous reasons. In the first place, to make the process continuous by mixing air and steam would involve the production of a lean gas containing much nitrogen. If a separate blow were used, a large amount of potential heat would be lost because the blow gas in such a process would contain a very high percentage of carbon monoxide. Oxygen is necessary therefore and oxygen remains relatively expensive for use in gasification. In the Winkler generator, formation of clinker caused by local overheating does not occur, because of the mobility and high heat transfer of a fluidized bed. These properties of fluidized dusts have been used most successfully.

Jan 1, 1953

By John Hays Hammond

Discussion of the paper of John Hays Hammond, presented at the Chattanooga meeting, October, 1908, and published in Bi.-Monthly Bulletin., No. 24, November, 1908, pp. 1171 to 117S. PROF. HENRY Louis, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, En j. (communication to the Secretary'`) :-I welcome Mr. Hammond's paper as an. attempt to give definiteness to the best modern professional practice. Such a codification of our professional ethics is urgently needed, seeing how widely the views of mining engineers differ on some of the point-,. raised, for example, I have no hesitation it) performing a class of work, as to which Mr. Hammond seems to entertain some doubts, and, on the other hand, I strongly condemn a practice which he appears to recommend. I have not the least hesitation in making reports for vendors of mining properties, and am constantly doing so; . the best justification for this practice may be found in the fact that such reports have been repeatedly accepted by buyers as giving a correct representation of the facts of the case, which is all that should be demanded from any report. On the other hand, Mr. Hammond advocates that mitring engineers should take payment for their reports tin shares of a company to be floated upon the basis of such reports. I hold that this is ethically wrong, as even the most honest of men is liable to be unconsciously biased under these conditions. Indeed, I go much further, and maintain that a mining engineer who re¬ports or advises upon mining properties should never hold any-mining shares at all, or be himself interested in any mine,' and this has been my consistent practice for many years. A man who holds shares in a mine, and is called upon to report upon a neighboring property or a similar mine, can never be wholly unbiased, and even if lie could be, he would always lay himself open to the suspicion that he was giving a favorable report so as to-enhance the value of the property in which he himself is interested, or an unfavorable report so as to stifle competi-

Jun 1, 1909

Jan 1, 1906

Jan 1, 1952

By R. W. Raymond

ALEXANDER BRINTON COXE was born in Philadelphia, Pa., Jan. 19, 1838, the second of five sons of lion. Charles Sidney Core and Ann Maria Brinton. A more extended history of his family and its important relations to the development of the United States will be found in my Biographical Notice of his younger brother, Eckley B. Coxe, published in 1895. It is therefore sufficient to say here that Dr. Daniel Coxe, a distinguished physician and surgeon of London, and a medical attendant of Charles II and Queen Anne, purchased, in 1684 and 1686, lands in East and West Jersey from grantees of the Duke of York, and became Governor of West Jersey, in which capacity he did much to develop the provincial fisheries, the manufacture of marine salt and pottery, the exportation of tim¬ber and the West India trade. In 1698, having acquired the royal patent of the Province of " Carolana," covering (with some reservations) the territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, between the 31st and 36th parallels of N. latitude, Gov. Cole sent an expedition from Charleston, S. C., to the Mississippi. In 1769, seventy years later, his grandchildren surrendered to the Crown their title under this vast and vague patent, receiving in return a grant of 100,000 acres in the Colony of New York. The line of his descendants, so far as they concern this sketch, is as follows 1. Col. Daniel Core, his son, b. 1673, who came to New Jersey in 1700; resided there until his death (1730); held many high offices; and issued in London (1722) A Description of the Provinces of Carolana, containing probably the earliest published plan of political union for the British Colonies in North America.

Sep 1, 1906

By Edward W. Parker

This plant was built in 1907 at the Bankhead mines to manufacture briquettes by the Zwoyer process under license from the Zwoyer Fuel Co., of New York, N. Y. The building was constructed to contain two units, each of a capacity of 10 tons per hr.; one unit was installed at the time the building was constructed, and the second unit is now being built. The coal used is an anthracite, which is more friable than that of Pennsylvania, and, as a consequence, a larger percentage of dust or waste is produced, which was formerly thrown upon the slack-pile as waste, but is now passed to the ? dust-bin " in the breaker, from which it is conveyed to the briquette-plant.

Jan 5, 1908

By AIME AIME

The following financial report of the Treasurer of the United Engineering Society is published for the information of members NEW YORK, February 15, 190S. To the Board of' Trustees, United Engineering Society I beg to submit herewith the report of the Treasurer as of December 31, 1907. Your attention is called to the fact that the resources and liabilities, receipts and disbursements statements cover all the financial transactions of the United Engineering Society from its organization up to December 31, 1907. The income and expenses of operating the building during the whole operating period from December 1 to December 31, 1907, somewhat in excess of twelve months, are given. Included in the expenses, amounting in all to $52,647.11, will be found an item entitled "Building Equipment (construction account)." The expenditures under this item were not made for the operating expenses of the building, they represent a construction account, properly speaking, covering expenditures for furnishings and equipment of the building. The Founders' Agreement specifically provides for this class of expenditure under the provision that the Founder Societies shall each be liable for a charge not to exceed $200,000 of principal, which shall include the land and building completed and ready for occupancy, together with the " furnishings, equipment and personal property therein." Certain details of equipment are yet to be supplied, and it. is proposed in the near future to call upon the Founder Societies for an assessment on their respective land and building funds to cover this item of building equipment. Such action would enable the item of $10,039.85 to be transferred to the income account and reduce correspondingly the assessment

Mar 1, 1908

By Hallet R. Robbins

KOREA, the ancient " Hermit Kingdom," is a peninsula jutting out from the coast of eastern Asia. By the natives it is called " Chosen," which, translated, means " Land of the Morning Calm." It lies between the Yellow sea and the Sea of Japan. On the north it is separated from Manchuria and the Russian province of Primorsk by the Yalu and Tiumen rivers ; on the south the Korean straits interpose a rough voyage of 120 miles to the nearest point in Japan. The entire country is situated between the parallels of 34° and 42° N. latitude. The surface of the country is made up of successive ranges of unglaciated mountains, separated by narrow, fertile, and more or less densely populated, valleys. Through all the obscure centuries of its history, Korea has succeeded in maintaining a monastic seclusion, over which, from time immemorial until the late Chino-Japanese war in 1894, China exercised a shadowy sovereignty. Although Korea had been forced into slight foreign contact previously, her first foreign treaty was signed with Japan in 1876. Under the restraining guardianship of China, the Japanese treaty bore but insignificant innovations for Korea; but when, in 1883, a treaty was made with the United States, the first of the western nations, a decade after the American gunboats, under Commodore Rodgers and Lieutenant Schley, forced their way up the Salee river, shooting daylight through the ancient walls and fastnesses, Korea awoke from her sleep of 4,000 years. The Korean peninsula suddenly became the arena where rival nations' enterprises and individuals met in fiercest conflict. Out of this struggle grew two singularly successful American

Jan 7, 1908