is never found absolutely pure, but always contains a small quantity of silver and frequently copper or iron, the proportion of gold in the alloy being 60.49 in Transylvania to 99.25 in Australia. Gold is also found alloyed with bismuth, palladium, rhodium, and associated with minerals and ores containing arsenic, antimony, tellurium and metallic sulphides of lead, iron, copper, zinc, etc. -The methods of obtaining and extracting gold vary with the character of the deposit in which it is found, but may be classified either as placer or vein mining. In the first, the gold is separated from an alluvial deposit by a purely mechanical process. After removing the overlying gravel or earthy material, the ground in contact with the bed rock is subjected to the action of water, where that is accessible, which, while removing the waste material, permits the gold to sink and be collected at the bottom. The separation of the gold in placer mining is effected in various ways: in some cases with a pan-a circular dish of sheet iron with sloping sides, a foot or more in diameter, held in a stream or hole filled with water. By skillful shaking and twisting the lighter materials are washed out, the heavier gold settling to the bottom. For treating larger quantities sometimes an appliance called a cradle, from its resemblance to that household article, is used. It is a box from three to six feet in length resting upon rockers and having an opening at one end and pieces of wood about an inch square, called riffle bars, nailed across its bottom. The dirt, upon which water from time to time is poured, is shaken by the rocking motion through a perforated riddle-box, into which it is shoveled by an assistant, and drops upon an apron sloping toward the upper end of the cradle, from which it falls to the bottom, running out at the lower end. | The gold, mixed with the heavier sand and gravel, is detained by the riffle bars. A modified form of the cradle, called a tom, with an extended inclined sluice, is sometimes constructed. Currents of water are also made to run through long sluices or shallow troughs, upon the bottom of which riffles made of strips of wood are placed. Whatever the mechanical contrivance employed, from the simple washing on the prospector's shovel to the largest hydraulic operations, the principle involved is the same, namely, the greater specific gravity of the gold carries it to the bottom of the pan, rocker or sluice, while the lighter and worthless portions are washed away. Where the gold is very finely divided, being in small grains or thin scales, it is liable to float away with the dirt, and is secured by using blankets of wool or copper plates covered with quicksilver to form an amalgam, which is removed by working and scraping the plates. -In California a large amount of gold is obtained by hydraulic mining, water being brought in many cases from great distances in ditches, flumes and iron pipes, from higher altitudes. Jets of water issuing under the pressure of a column, sometimes hundreds of feet in

height, through nozzles skillfully arranged and directed, strike with tremendous force against the banks and beds of earth containing gold. Hills are undermined and washed away, their material being moved by the current into sluices where the gold is separated and collected. The earthy matter is carried to the lower levels and valleys or held in solution until it settles in the bays and more sluggish currents of the large rivers near the coast. The operations in mining gold-bearing quartz or other vein material are conducted in the manner usually employed in mining other metals or minerals. At a convenient point, either a tunnel, where practicable, is run horizontally from the surface to the vein, or a shaft is sunk perpendicularly to a sufficient depth, and from it a drift or level run until the vein is reached. Gold in quartz or free milling ores is usually disseminated in small particles, to obtain which, before undergoing the usual treatment, the goldbearing rock must be finely pulverized. Various methods and devices are employed, among the simplest of which is the arrastra, which has a circular bed of stone of from eight to twenty feet in diameter with a post in the middle, through which extends a horizontal bar reaching to the cir cumference on either side. From each arm revolv ing around the post hangs a heavy stone weighing from three to five hundred pounds, the former end slightly raised above and the hinder resting upon the bed of rock to be crushed. Somewhat similar to this is the Chilian mill, with the same central upright and revolving arms, but having the grinding stones with a beveled face and roll, instead of being dragged upon the floor.-These earlier and ruder methods have been succeeded in large mining operations by rock crushers and stamp mills. By the former the rock is broken and crushed between powerful iron jaws, and by the latter pulverized by successive blows of heavy iron stamps or hammers upon the rock or ore resting upon a hardened iron bed. The pulverized rock is washed away, and the gold, set free, is collected by mercury, as in placer mining, but with greater care, as the particles of gold being smaller are more liable to be carried away by the current.-To separate the gold from the mercury, the amalgam, after first pressing out all the fluid mercury, is placed in an iron retort and heated to a low red heat, when the mercury volatilizes, passes over into a condenser connected with the retort, and is thus recovered for use in future operations. The gold is obtained nearly free from mercury (it being difficult to drive off the last portion of that metal) in a porous, sponge-like form, which can readily be melted and cast into bars.-Ores in which the matrix is an oxide of the metals are generally free milling. Those other than free milling are chiefly the sulphides of iron and copper, and to some extent lead, antimony and zinc, though in the latter silver is usually the more valuable constituent. - Ores in which gold is combined with the sulphides of the base metals are refractory in proportion to the extent of the base

metal, and the treatment is as varied as are the proportions in which the combinations exist. With some ores a simple roasting to eliminate the sulphur is found to be sufficient, and the most economical treatment which the value of the ore will permit, preparatory to crushing and amalgamating. Other ores of iron are better treated by the chlorinating process, while those in which copper or lead are valuable constituents are best treated by a smelting process which results in forming base bars of lead containing the precious metals or copper matte. The gold is removed from lead in a reverberating furnace, and copper matte is usually sold to copper works.-Gold as received at the mints, unless it is from a refinery, invariably contains silver. The methods of separating these two metals are known as the nitric acid process and the sulphuric acid process, in both of which the same principle is involved, that of dissolving the silver, decanting it from the gold, and subsequently recovering it by precipitation. In the nitric acid process, to accomplish the solution of the silver, the gold is melted with twice its weight of silver, and while in a fused condition poured in a thin stream from a height of two or three feet into a tank of cold water for the purpose of subdividing it into granulations and giving a large surface for the action of the acid. The granulations are transferred to porcelain pots and treated with nitric acid; the pots are placed in a water bath to accelerate chemical action, the nitrous fumes of which are abundantly emitted, being carried away by a high flue. After the silver has been dissolved, the solution is drawn off into wooden vats containing a solution of sodium chloride, which precipitates the silver from a nitrate into a chloride. The gold is placed on a filter, washed, dried, pressed into cakes and melted. The precipitated chloride is removed to lead-lined vats, and zinc in a granulated condition is introduced, when a reaction attended by evolution of heat sets in, a soluble chloride of zinc is formed, and the silver liberated in a metallic state. It is subsequently washed, dried, pressed and melted into bars as in the case of the gold. In the sulphuric acid process the same preliminary steps are observed in granulating the bullion. The granulations are treated in iron pots, with concentrated sulphuric acid, which in part breaks up, giving oxygen to the silver, while the undecomposed acid combines with the oxide of silver thus formed and forms sulphate of silver. The fumes from the operation are carried into a lead-lined chamber and reconverted into sulphuric acid by the aid of air and hyponitric acid. The gold is taken from the pots after the silver has been dissolved and drawn off, and treated as the residual gold from the nitric acid process. The sulphate of silver is decomposed in lead-lined vats by metallic copper, which in the process is converted into sulphate of copper, and the silver is precipitated in a metallic form. The solution of sulphate of copper, after being decanted, is concentrated by heat to the crystal

lizing point and recovered as commercial blue vitriol, and the silver is washed, dried, etc., and cast into bars. The fineness of bullion and coin is estimated in thousandths, pure metal being considered 1000 fine. The process of ascertaining the fineness of gold, or assaying, may be briefly described as follows: One thousand parts of the alloy is accurately weighed; the weight used, for convenience' sake, is the French gramme divided into 1000 parts or millegrammes. Pure silver, to the amount of twice the weight of pure gold estimated to be contained in the alloy, is added, and the whole, enveloped in a piece of lead foil, is placed in a cupel in a muffle furnace heated to a high temperature. The cupel is made of compressed bone ash, and possesses the property of absorbing the oxides of base metals. The lead foil is oxidized, and as it is absorbed by the cupel carries with it the oxides of the base metals which may be contained in the alloy. This part of the process eliminates the base metal from the 1000 parts of alloy being operated upon. The button of gold and silver taken from the cupel is laminated by hammer and rolls into a thin slip and digested in nitric acid, which dissolves the silver and leaves the pure gold, which, after washing, drying and annealing, is returned to the balance and weighed. Its weight in millegrammes expresses in thousandths the fineness of the alloy. Gold is one of the metals earliest mentioned in history, and has been found in all parts of the world. Almost every country contains workable mines or deposits of gold, but nearly all the fields in which supplies prior to the Christian era were obtained are at present abandoned. The most productive appear to have been situated cast of Persia, probably in Tartary or southern Siberia, from which large stores were derived; also in India, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia and other regions on the east coast of Africa; and in Asia Minor, Thrace, Greece, and some of the neighboring islands, Italy, Spain and Gaul. From the historical accounts of the large quantities of gold used in the ornamentation of ancient temples and public buildings, held in the treasuries and owned by monarchs and private citizens, in the form of plate, or money, and of the sums collected at various times for tribute, it is supposed that ancient mining was prosecuted with its greatest success during the first few centuries preceding the Christian era, but, either because mining for gold became less profitable or the mines were gradually exhausted, the production of gold after the reign of Augustus Cæsar rapidly diminished, and in the fifth century of our era had almost ceased. Many of the countries conquered by the Romans contained mines of gold which continued to furnish supplies during the continuance of the empire. But the Roman method of leasing and operating the mines soon ruined the mining industry. The operations were carried on by the labor of unwilling slaves, and being leased to favorites, whose only care was to secure the greatest profit during the term for

which they were to have possession, the richest deposits were worked out and no care taken to keep open the drifts and tunnels for the use of future occupants. - The principal deposits of gold worked during the present century are in the United States, in Australia, and in portions of Africa. Gold is mined to a limited extent in some of the mountainous regions of central and southwestern Europe in which the large rivers take their rise-notably the Rhine, the Danube and the Rhone. Small quantities have been annually produced in Italy, Hungary, Germany, Spain, and, in former years, in Turkey, Japan, China, in many other regions of Asia and Africa, and even in Great Britain. The largest gold production of the eastern hemisphere is found in Siberia on the eastern slope of the Ural mountains, and still further east on the headwaters of the Yenessei and Amoor rivers. These mines have been worked for many years with an increasing annual yield, amounting in 1880 to $28,000.000. A still larger quantity has been annually furnished to the world, since 1852, from Australia, embracing Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and New Zealand, which together, in 1880, added $30,000,000 to the world's stock of the precious metals. A less productive but still important gold field is found in South America, principally in Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil, which promises to increase its present yield of $6,000,000 per annum. Gold is also found in North America on the Atlantic slope, in Nova Scotia, also near Quebec and on the eastern watershed of the Alleghany mountains, in the Carolinas and Georgia, and in the western mountain regions, in various localities, from Alaska to Central America. But the richest and most extensive deposits thus far discovered have been found in the states on the Pacific slope or in the basins or parallel ranges west of the Rocky mountains. - The gold mines of the United States, according to the mint reports, produced, in the fiscal year 1881, $36,500,000, and for thirty-four years, from 1848 to 1881 inclusive, $1,557,000,000. The yield of the several states and territories for 1880-81 was reported by the director of the mint as follows:

1881.

7,000 770,000 19,000,000

- The production of the precious metals in the early centuries prior to and immediately succeeding the commencement of the Christian era, is somewhat conjectural. No reports are extant of the amount yearly obtained from the mines. As far as any authentic information has been received, the deposits of gold known to the ancients were little worked after the fall of the Roman empire, and from that date to the close of the fifteenth century, although in some regions gold was still obtained, the total amount was not large. If Mr. Jacob's conclusions are reliable, the total production of gold in Europe and western Asia from A. D. 800 to A. D. 1500 could not have exceeded $35,000,000, for he states that during that period the production of the precious metals was one-seventh or one-eighth of what it was from 1700 to 1800 in Europe and east of the Ural mountains, which for the last twenty years, the most productive period, he reports to have been $1,000,000 gold and $3,000,000 silver. According to his estimates, the mines of America sent to the old world, between A. D. 1492 and 1600, gold and silver of the value of $690.000,000, and from A. D. 1600 to 1700, $1,687 000,000; the mines of Europe and America furnished from A. D. 1700 to 1810, $4,000,000,000, and from A. D. 1810 to 1830, $500,000,000. The official statements published by him show that from the Russian mines, which commenced to produce in 1704, up to 1810, gold had been extracted to the value of 1,726 puds ($1,500,000) of which $500,000 was obtained within the last twenty years of the period. The average annual production of Asia and Africa he made $6,000,000. Dr. Adolph Soetbeer's summary of the production in all the gold-producing countries of the world, from the discovery of America, to 1880, gives the following amounts and values:

$

6,000 400,000

COUNTRIES.

3,400,000

3,600,000

4,500,000

United States..

Kilograms.

54,168 $36,000,000

120,000

42,960 28,551,028

1,980,000

45,251

30,073,815

2,400,000

Nevada

4,800,000

350

232,610

New Mexico

130,000

1,598

1,062,031

- That the gold obtained from the mines for many centuries before the discovery of America was insignificant compared with their present production, is to some extent evidenced by contrasting the yearly coinages of the periods. The mint records of Great Britain show that gold coinage from the eighteenth year of Edward III. to the death of Henry VII., was only £464,908; from the accession of James I. to George I., £18,244,868; from that date to 1829, £132,056,241; and from 1830 to 1880, £201,897,275. The average annual gold coinage was

- The gold coinage of the United States has in like manner increased. From A. D. 1793 up to and including the year 1848, when gold began to arrive at the mint from California, a period of fifty-six years, $76,341,440 of gold was coined an annual average of $1,363,400. But in the succeeding thirty-three years, 1849-81, the gold coinage increased to $1,135,495,746, and averaged yearly $34,408,962, and for the last eight years nearly $50,000,000. The same fact is seen in looking at the total gold coinage, etc., of a number of countries for the preceding five years, as stated in the reports of the director of the mint as follows:

The total yearly coinage at the mints of the various countries of the world, however, always far exceeds the production, as those institutions are employed in manufacturing into coins of their own country, the coins imported from foreign countries as well as the bullion received from the mines. Upon a careful review of the metallic circulation in all the commercial countries of the world, both Dr. Soetbeer and the director of the United States mint find that the total amount of the gold coin in those countries is less than half the amount of gold received from the mines since the discovery of America, and not even half of their yield during the twenty-nine years from 1851 to 1879. It is evident, therefore, that the greater portion of the annual production is appropriated for other purposes than coinage into money. — Efforts have been made by several statisticians, notably by Jacob and by Soetbeer, to ascertain the amount of gold and silver lost by abrasion and used in ornamentation and the arts. In the years 1879, 1880 and 1881 the director of the mint caused circular inquiries to be issued, the replies to which reported as used in manufactures and the arts in the United States in 1881, of coin and bullion other than old jewelry, plate, etc., over ten millions of gold and over three millions of silver, and the director estimated in 1881, that over eleven millions of gold was thus used

in the United States and at least seventy five millions in the world. The character of the gold was reported to him as follows:

United States coins
Fine bars used

Foreign coin, Jewelry, plate, etc.

Total

3,315,882 6,171,317 599,524

$10,086,723

- Mr. William Jacob, in 1831, made a very exhaustive inquiry as to the amount of money in the world at various periods up to that date. He placed the accumulated stock of gold and silver, in the year A. D. 14, at 1,790 millions of dollars, which he estimated, however, to have been reduced by the year 482 to 435 millions of dollars, and in A. D. 806 to 168 millions, and that it remained at about 170 millions up to the discovery of America in 1492. By the year 1600, accessions from the mines of America had increased the amount of gold and silver to 1,650 millions of dollars, by 1700 to 1,130 millions, by 1809 to 1,900 millions, and twenty years later, 1829, to 1,566 millions. Some authorities have questioned the allowance made by Jacob for abrasion and appropriation in the arts, and place the stock in the world upon the discovery of America at a higher rate. Seyd's estimate makes it 900 millions of dollars. He estimates the amount of money in the world in 1848 to be, of gold, 2,000 millions; in 1872, 3,650 millions; and in 1878, 4,150 millions. Soetbeer, assuming that the amount of gold available for coinage in civilized countries in 1830 was 800,000 kilograms ($531,216,000), estimated that, after deducting for consumption in the arts and export to the Orient, there remained 4,690,000 kilograms ($3,116,974,000). This nearly coincides with the estimate of the director of the mint for 1880, who makes the gold circulation of the world $3,221,223,971. — During the three centuries preceding our own, general prices seem to have advanced in Europe, as the same nominal sum of money would buy much less in the eighteenth than in the fifteenth century. This is accounted for in some measure by the debasement of the coins then frequently practiced in every country, but it is more generally attributed to the effect of the large amount of gold and silver received during that period from the western world. It might therefore have been expected, and has been asserted, that the increased production of gold in the world after 1848, and the large addition to the stock of money in commercial countries, would depress its purchasing power, or, what is the same thing, inflate prices. A comparison, however, of the market prices of staple articles in several commercial countries, does not show any large advance in the average prices of the years 1878 to 1881, over the prices of 1850. In some instances they appear to be lower. According to statistical tables in the London Economist," the prices, in 1878, of a large number of selected articles, being the principal commodities entering into consumption in England, were 101 per cent. of the mean of their prices for

the years 1845-50, and their mean prices for the years 1878-81 were 114 per cent., and in 1881 were about 116 per cent. A comparative table of the prices of French imports and exports at different periods shows that in 1878 the prices of French imports were 96 per cent. and of French exports 74 per cent. a mean of 85 per cent. of their prices in 1850. A like comparison of the prices of leading commodities in the New York market for the same years shows in 1878 no advance, although prices were somewhat higher in 1880. It may therefore be said that the enormous addition to the metallic circulation witnessed in the last thirty years appears to have been required by the increased wealth, greater commercial enterprise and enlarged production of the present period, and to have been received and absorbed without thus far materially affecting general prices.

HORATIO C. BURCHARD.

GOVERNMENT. This word is used to designate the aggregate of the powers to which the exercise of effective sovereignty belongs in each state. The union under one central authority of all the component elements of nations is what alone constitutes and makes them political bodies, that is to say, bodies capable of life, of volition and collective action; and there is not a single nation which would not fall into dissolution if the government called to direct it should disappear or cease to obtain the submission which it requires in order to be obeyed. — Though all governments have in reality the same tasks to perform, they are far from existing under the same form. There are as many political institutions, as many communities in which the sovereign authority lives and acts under conditions markedly diverse, as there are states. Hence governments are divided into different species or kinds; but, as a modern writer (Dufau, la République et la Monarchie; introduction, p. 18) justly remarks, "we have still to find a correct classification of the forms of government and discuss the name proper to each." We are indebted to the Greeks for the most ancient classification of governments. According to their publicists there were three forms of the state and of government: monarchy, or the reign of a single man; aristocracy, or the reign of the great and wealthy; democracy, or the reign of the aggregate of free men: forms, the corruption of which produced, respectively, tyranny, oligarchy, and demagogy or ochlocracy (mob rule). Since each of these forms, whenever it prevails alone, is not slow in bringing on abuses and evils of an increasing gravity, some writers have advised a combination of them, but without being able to indicate definitely the means of effecting this combination nor the means of preserving it from all destructive change. The ancients were led to adopt the classification which they did, by the idea which they formed of sovereignty. Slavery, which weighed upon a part of the population by preventing them from rising to an understanding of the rights which flow from

the nature of man, concealed from them the origin and the essence of this sovereignty. In their eyes sovereignty had its origin in force alone. It belonged altogether to the state, that is to say, to those who being masters in the state alone had the government of it. Outside their ranks were none but subordinates, subjects, held to obey laws framed without their co-operation. Under the empire of such ideas it was natural that distinctions between forms of government should all rest upon a single fact, the numerical proportion existing between governments and the governed. — In modern times, owing to more exact ideas of law and sovereignty, the truth has been more nearly approached, and the definition given by Montesquieu of the nature of the three kinds of government, if it does not embrace the whole truth, embraces a great part of it. "There are," says Montesquieu, "three kinds of government: the republican, the monarchic and the despotic. The republican is that in which the people in a body, or only a part of the people, exercise sovereign power; the monarchic is that in which a single man governs, but according to fixed and established laws; while in the despotic one man, without law or rule, controls everything by his will and caprice." Since the time of Montesquieu many other classificatious have been made and new names used, but the work has advanced but little, and doubt and confusion exist in men's minds, which can not but react harmfully upon the correctness of political ideas. — The forms of government are so numerous and variable that it is very difficult indeed to consider all the differences which exist between them; in this matter, we must content ourselves with discovering the real source of the forms of government and ascertaining what is fundamental in them. The observation of facts gives the following result: In principle, sovereignty resides and can reside only in the aggregate of the individuals united into one same political body; but as it is impossible for the population to exercise this sovereignty by themselves and continually, they are forced to establish governments to which all that part of sovereignty is given which they can not reserve to themselves. On the other hand, under whatever title and to whatever extent governments are invested with sovereign power they never possess it completely. Among every people, in the absence of recognized political rights, feelings and will are met with, whose supremacy is maintained, and which impose on the action of the government impassable limits. Thus, there exists between peoples and governments at all places and times a division of the exercise of sovereignty, which, however unequal it may be, and whatever the provisions of the law concerning it, can not result in leaving either peoples or governments without some part of this exercise. There are many states in which the division of the exercise of sovereignty between the people and the gov ernment is a constitutional and legal reality. Such states are those in which there exist only the