James D. Waite says his school battalion went to Washington last year, and is going again this year, and he offers to write a morsel describing the trip. By all means let us have the morsel. You are a member of the Order if you have a Patent in the Camera Club. One Patent admits to all divisions of the Order. Henry T. Smith asks what the new process is by which so much more gold than formerly is now gotten out of quartz and gold ore. Here it is. It is somewhat technical. It was invented in Australia. The machine consists of vertical distributors and mercury baths, placed as follows:--The crashed materials or slum enter a cast-iron trough or distributor, which is from 3 feet to 6 feet long and 5 inches wide; its sectional shape is half round. At the bottom of this distributor, and in a straight line from end to end, is a row of 1-4-inch holes, 5-6 inch from centre to centre. Below this is placed a mercury bath 2-1/8 inches wide by 5/16 inch deep, running the whole length of the distributor, and placed at a distance sufficient to cause the materials passing through the holes to form an indentation in the silver about the size of half a pea. These jets strike the mercury in the centre of the ripple at right angles. By these means the whole of the stuff is brought into forcible contact with the silver without separating it, and flows over its surface into another distributor below; and from there it again passes through another row of holes, and brought into contact with a second bath of silver. This operation is repeated until every particle of tailings has passed over eight mercury baths.
This Department is conducted in the interest of stamp and coin collectors, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on these subjects so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor Stamp Department.
The old-style St. Helena stamps have been displaced by the current issue of the De la Rue type. The immediate advance in prices of the obsolete set prompts the _Weekly Era_ to warn the dealers and speculators that the extreme rise in ordinary stamps, simply because they have become obsolete, will tend to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. In many cases such advances are not only unjustifiable, but foolish also, in view of the fact that large stocks are in existence. Every one except speculators will heartily agree with the _Era_ in trying to abolish an evil which threatens the popularity of stamp-collecting.