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(lays. The plant consists of nine berdans driven by an overshot water-wheel 30ft. in diameter. There is considerable labour in collecting the tailings, as they have been in the creek-bed for the last twenty years, and get carried down a short distance every flood; consequently there is not a large quantity to be found in one place, the bed of the creek being merely cleaned up for the tailings it contains. During the last year there was not a large quantity of tailings treated, but the party was satisfied with the yield of gold. A party is erecting another tailings plant lower down the creek than Dawson and party to work the same tailings. Whether these plants will be payable ventures it yet remains to be seen. Had these tailings been all stacked in the early days, and been in one place, instead of being washed for a couple of miles or so down the bed of the creek, it would have been a lucrative undertaking to treat these tailings, as some very rich quartz was crushed from those mines at the first of the field, and the methods of saving gold were much more defective then than what they are at the present time. Boatman's. —A tailings plant was erected here by Mr. Levi and others to treat the Welcome tailings by the cyanide process. This method is represented as having proved a failure on account of the quantity of slimes, and also the antimony there was in the ore originally. The latter metal has, no doubt, a considerable influence on the successful treatment of ore by cyanide solutions ; but the principal cause appears to me to be that the ore in the first place was crushed too coarse, and therefore the particles of gold are too large to be rapidly dissolved in cyanide solutions. The waste material, after leaching, should have been run over copper-plates coated with mercury, and these would have recovered the most of the gold, as the cyanide solution would have left it in a state readily amalgamable. The mine-owners are now adopting this principle on the northern goldfields, 'where the gold occurs in the ore in a much more finely-divided state than the gold in the quartz in the Eeefton district, and they find they recover a sufficient quantity to pay them for the labour and expense of fitting up tables for this purpose. During the last year 1770z. bullion was extracted at the Boatman's tailings plant, representing a value of £238 19s. Lyell. This is a district where there has been a considerable quantity of work done in the quartzworking, and where occasional good patches of auriferous stone is obtained in small leaders running through the country-rock, as, for instance, in the United Italy and lyrconnel Mines; but the principal mainstay of the place has been the Alpine Mine, in which there has always been a large number of wages-men employed. At one time there was a considerable number of men employed in working and prospecting for quartz lodes, and it was thought by many that the Lyell reefs would be traced to Mokihinui; but, so far as prospecting operations have been carried on, the reefs yielding payable returns have not yet been traced for any great distance. A considerable amount of work was done on some lodes in the locality of the New Creek, but on testing the stone at the crushing-batteries it did not prove payable for working. There was good stone on the side of the range opposite the Alpine Mine, facing a branch of New Creek, but since erecting a battery of ten heads of stamps, and commencing to crush the stone, the returns fell off, as payable ore could not be found, the lode being enclosed between very hard rock walls, similar in character to that found in the lower levels of the Eed Queen Mine at Mokihinui. Consequently all mining operations were suspended in this mine, and, as far as my remembrance goes, no prospecting in this mine has been carried on since. The quartz-workings in this district last year have been confined to the Dnited Alpine, United Italy, Lyell Creek Extended, Croesus, and Tyrconnel Mines. Alpine. —This mine is being worked from the No. 7 adit-level, which is about 852 ft. below the place where the lode was first discovered, and now the whole of the payable ore, as far as ascertained, has been very nearly taken out down to this level. The principal workings are now carried on from an inclined shaft at the end of No. 7 level, having a vertical depth of about 111 ft., a level being opened out from the bottom of this shaft. For the first 70ft. of this level, good ore was met with, but a blank then occurred in the lode for about 60ft., when a large body of ore was found to come in, but of poor quality. In the first half of the year —that is, from the Ist of May to the end of October last —fair returns were obtained, but since then the ore that has been taken out is of less value. Taking the year ending the 31st of October last, there was 8,107 tons of stone crushed, which yielded 4,3000z. gold, having a value of £16,801 11s. 4d. During this period £7,891 4s. was paid in wages in the mine, £1,167 3s. 9d. in wages in connection with working the crushing-battery, and £3,474 12s. 5d., upon new plant and repairs to battery, which amounted to £99 Is. 4d., making the total expenses in connection with the mine and office £10,374 12s. 5d., and £2,154 7s. 9d. as the expenses in connection with the crushing-battery. The balance of £1,758 155., which was carried forward from the previous year's balance-sheet, enabled dividends to be paid to the extent of £5,200. This company procured a Mudie crusher to operate on the tailings; but, so far, this machine has not come up to the expectations formed as to its capabilities, or to what it was said to be capable of doing by the patentee. Mr. Wellman, whose name is well known in connection with the Wellman dredges, has, however, undertaken to put this machine in satisfactory working-order. As this is the first machine of this description on the West Coast its performance will be looked forward to with some interest. It certainly appears to be a crushing-machine in which there will not be a large amount of wear-and-tear, and ought to be a good quartz-crusher, although it does notr seem to be a machine that will be successful in grinding tailings to a fine pulp. The erection of this Mudie crusher, including labour, cost the Alpine Company £72 16s. 3d., and during the time it was working upon the tailings the wages in connection with it was £30 6s. Bd., while the repairs were £8. There is, however, no information as to the quantity of tailings operated on; but, judging from the amount expended in repairs to a new machine, some of the details of its construction have not been properly worked out. There is reason to believe that Mr. Wellman will be able