_Chief Quartz-Mills._--The most productive quartz-mill in the state is the Benton mill, on Fremont's Ranch, in Mariposa county. It is also the largest, having forty-eight stamps. There are four mills on the estate, with ninety-one stamps in all, and their average yield per month is sixty thousand dollars. A railroad four miles long, conveys the quartz from the lode to the mills. The Allison quartz mine in Nevada county, produces forty thousand dollars per month. The Sierra Buttes quartz-mill, twelve miles from Downieville, yields about fifteen thousand dollars per month. These last mills run night and day, and crush and amalgamate ten thousand tons of rock a year, or twenty-eight tons per day. Forty men are employed, twenty-five to quarry the rock, five in the mill to attend to the stamps and amalgamation, one to do carpentry, one for blacksmithing, and eight for getting out timber, transporting quartz, and so forth. The cost of quarrying, crushing and amalgamating a ton of rock, is six dollars. The wages of the men are from fifty to seventy dollars per month with boarding. The average wages is sixty dollars. About ten miles eastward of Sonora, in Tuolumne county, are some rich veins of auriferous quartz, the most prominent of which are the Soulsby and Blakeslee lodes. The Soulsby mill produced forty thousand dollars in three weeks, when it commenced work in 1858, but it has not been so profitable of late. _Silver Mining._--Silver mining has not yet been established fairly as a business in California. The silver ores of Washoe were discovered in 1859, and mining has been fairly commenced there, but the mines of Esmeralda and Coso, within the limits of this state, were not found until the summer of 1860, and up to the present time no mills have been established there. Silver mining differs much from gold mining. Gold is always found as a metal, never as an ore, and the separation from the accompanying vein-stone with which it is mixed mechanically, is much more simple and easy than the reduction of the argentiferous ores in which the silver is chemically combined with base substances, for which it has a strong affinity. Chemical knowledge and chemical processes are more necessary in mining for silver than for gold; and while all auriferous quartz is of the same kind, and may be treated in the same manner, there are many different kinds of silver ores, each of which requires a peculiar treatment. The reduction of silver ore costs on an average, from three to five times as much as the reduction of auriferous quartz.