Some seventeen years since I was engaged on the construction of a dry amalgamator in which sublimated mercury was passed from a retort through the descending gangue in a vertical cylinder, the material thence falling through an aperture into a revolving settler, the object being to save water on mines in dry country. The model, about quarter size, was completed when my attention was called to an American invention, in which the same result was stated to be attained more effectively by blowing the mercury spray through the triturated material by means of a steam jet. I had already encountered a difficulty, since found so obstructive by experimentalists in the same direction, that is, the getting of the mercury back into its liquid metallic form. This difficulty I am now convinced can be largely obviated by my own device of using a very weak solution of sulphuric acid (it can hardly be too weak) and adding a small quantity of zinc to the mercury. It is perfectly marvellous how some samples of mercury "sickened" or "floured" by bad treatment, may be brought back to the bright limpid metal by a judicious use of these inexpensive materials. Thus it will probably be found practicable to crush dry and amalgamate semi-dry by passing the material in the form of a thin pasty mass to a settler, as in the old South American arrastra, and, by slowly stirring, recover the mercury, and with it the bulk of the gold. The following is from the _Australian Mining Standard_, and was headed "Amalgamation Without Overflow": "Recent experiments at the Ballarat School of Mines have proved that a deliverance from difficulties is at hand from an unexpected quarter. The despised Chilian mill and Wheeler pan, discarded at many mines, will solve the problem, but the keynote of success is amalgamation without overflow. Dispense with the overflow and the gold is saved. "Two typical mines--the Great Mercury Proprietary Gold Mine, of Kuaotunu, N.Z., the other, the Pambula, N.S.W.--have lately been conducting a series of experiments with the object of saving their fine gold in an economical manner. The last and best trials made by these companies were at the Ballarat School of Mines, where amalgamation without overflow was put to a crucial test, in each case with the gratifying result that ninety-six per cent of the precious metal was secured. What this means to the Great Mercury Mine, for instance, can easily be imagined when it is understood that notwithstanding all the latest gold-saving adjuncts during the last six months 1260 tons of ore, worth 4l. 17s. 10 2_3d. a ton, have been put through for a saving of 1l. 9s. 1 2_3d. only; or in other words over two-thirds of the gold has gone to waste (for the time being) in the tailings, and in the tailings at the present moment lie the dividends that should have cheered shareholders' hearts.