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"Hark ye, Concho," he said, "that bit of medicine I gave you just now was worth a dollar, it was worth a dollar because the material of which it was composed was made from the stuff you have in that can, quicksilver or mercury. It is one of the most valuable of metals, especially in a gold-mining country. My good fellow, if you know where to find enough of it, your fortune is made."

Thus from the combinations of metals with acids, and from those combinations of animal fluids, which are termed secretions, this fluid matter of heat is given out amongst the neighbouring bodies; and in the solutions of salts in water, or of water in air, it is absorbed from the bodies, that surround them; whilst in its facility in passing through metallic bodies, and its difficulty in pervading resins and glass, it resembles the properties of the electric aura; and is like that excited by friction, and seems like that to gravitate amongst other bodies in its uncombined state, and to find its equilibrium.

Much ignorance is displayed on the subject of lode formation and the deposition of metals therein, even by mining men of long experience. Many still insist that lodes, particularly those containing gold, are of igneous origin, and point to the black and brown ferro-manganic outcrops in confirmation.

This confirms the 'meridional hypothesis' of Professor Sedgwick, who stated, 'As some of the great physical agencies of the earth are meridional, these agencies may probably, in a way we do not comprehend, have influenced the deposit of metals on certain lines of bearing. We may also observe that all the great mineral chains of the old and new world are meridional rather than longitudinal, striking from north-east to south-west.

For, if a man always wanted to tell his symptoms and a woman always wished to hear about them, surely a marriage compact on the basis of such a passion ought to open up for them a union of overflowing and indestructible felicity. They should associate as perfectly as the compensating metals of a pendulum, of which the one contracts as the other expands.

All the experiments effected on the conductivity of gases or metals, and on the radiations of active bodies, have induced us to regard the atom as being constituted by a positively charged centre having practically the same magnitude as the atom itself, round which the electrons gravitate; and it might evidently be supposed that this positive centre itself preserves the fundamental characteristics of matter, and that it is the electrons alone which no longer possess any but electromagnetic mass.

Not a speck of gold can be seen. How can it be secured? Set a trap for it. Put down something that has an affinity voracious appetite, unslakable thirst, metallic affection for gold, and they will come together. We have heard of potable gold "potabile aurum." There are metals to which all gold is drinkable. Mercury is one of them.

The laughter over, I was assisted to rise, and having drank about a pint of vinegar, and had my face and temples washed in strong whiskey punch the allocation of the fluids being mistaken, I learned that our host, the high sheriff, was a celebrated tin and iron man, and that his salles de reception were no other than his magazine of metals, and that to conceal the well filled shelves from the gaze of his aristocratic guests, they were clothed in the manner related; which my unhappy head, by some misfortune, displaced, and thus brought on a calamity scarcely less afflicting to him than to myself.

In these places, the king has officers to watch over the people who gather the precious stones. In some places, these are dug out of mines, like the ores of metals, and the rock has often to be broken to come at the precious stones which it contains.

Here, as in all the mountains of Venezuela, the produce of the ore has been found to be very variable. The lodes are very often divided, or they altogether cease; and the metals appear only in kidney-ores, and present the most delusive appearances. It is, however, only in this group of mountains of San Felipe and Barquisimeto, that the working of mines has been continued till the present time.