‘In the excitement caused by this astounding discovery it is scarcely more than the hard truth to say that San Francisco went raving mad. The vein in which the Bonanza was found was known to run straight through the Consolidated Virginia and California mines, dipping down as it went, and could not be traced any farther. But that fact was nothing to people who were bent on having mining stock; and vein or no vein, the stock they would have. Consequently they bought into every mine in the neighbourhood—good and bad alike—sending prices up to unheard-of limits, and investing millions in worthless properties that have never yielded a shilling in dividends, and never will. When Flood had bought a large quantity of the Bonanza stock, and had assured to himself and his partners the controlling interest in the mines, he recommended all his friends to buy a little; and O’Brien did the same. Those who took the advice are now drawing their proportionate shares of dividends, amounting to about five hundred thousand pounds a month. The majority of those who bought into other mines are, in Californian parlance “busted.” What these three men and their latest partner Mackay are going to do with their money is a curious problem, the solution of which will be watched with great interest in a year or two to come. The money they hold now is yielding them returns so enormous that their maddest extravagances could make no impression on the amount. Every year they are earning more, saving more, and investing more. They have organised a bank with a capital of ten millions of dollars; they control nearly all the mining interests of Nevada and California; they have a strong grip of the commercial, financial, and farming interests all along the Pacific slope; and by a single word they can at any moment raise a disastrous panic, and plunge thousands of men into hopeless ruin. It will be an interesting thing to wait and watch how this terrible power for good or evil is to be wielded.’ THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.