However, according to circumstances these partnerships are formed, it can only be said that there is no occasion for more than four persons in a company, and frequently three or two do better than four. For protection and occasional service that one may require from another, it is always better to be in partnership with a suitable person or persons: in messing, for instance, it is better to have several in a mess for the sake of occupying the same tent, and having less cooking to do, as in such cases this is done by turns. The small machines have thus far been the best machines in use, and under the circumstances of pressing necessities of miners, in which they had their origin, nothing better or more convenient could have been got up; but they cannot be said to be the result of a scientific investigation and extensive experience. Recently, a very great improvement has been introduced into the method of washing placer gold. This improvement is the “Burke Rocker,” as improved by Jackson, and which is now generally used in Virginia for washing gold in similar deposites to those of California; it is there no longer an experiment as it has been used in those mines for thirty years past, after an examination of all the processes for washing gold both in Europe and America. This rocker has been found to be perfectly applicable to the soil here, as two of them have been in a successful operation on Mormon Island for some time past under the immediate superintendence of Mr. Jackson himself. It is destined to effect great changes in the process of washing gold in this country, and particularly when the miner that now works independently and alone will find his labor very hard and not paying him sufficiently, since this machine being worked with mercury, saves the most minute particles of gold that escape the eye, and thus gives in aggregate a greater result than can be sometimes obtained by washing large pieces alone. It requires five persons only to work one of these rockers; their great excellence can be summed up in a very few words: by the use of one about four times the quantity of earth may be washed by each man daily, and probably from two-fifths to three-fifths more gold is obtained from any given quantity washed. They will be doubtless ere long used with great success in going over the field already washed by the present imperfect method; as the bars and banks of rivers and the earth in “dry diggings,” for certain it is that the amount of fine gold dust inevitably lost by the smaller machines is greater than all that is saved ordinarily.