MRS. HALL'S SMELTING FURNACE
We would call the attention of all persons interested in mines and mining machinery, to several bars of copper and galena, which are exposed to view on a table in front of the hot-air engine in the Mechanics' Fair. The bar modestly marked "galena," contains more silver than anything else, and was smelted from ordinary ore in Mrs. Hall's famous smelting furnace, by her daughter. The time occupied by the young lady in the production of this bar was only twenty minutes, and the materials used were a bushel of ore and a bushel of charcoal. By this process every particle of metal can be extracted from ore and saved, in less time and at smaller expense than the same ore could be roasted preparatory to crushing in a quartz mill. Copper ore can be reduced with the same facility and at the same slight expense. The furnace is a combination of principles long known to the votaries of science, but the "Condenser" attached to it is an entirely new invention, and the credit of originating it belongs to Mrs. Hall alone. It is a large drum, which sits upon the flue of the furnace, and into which all the smoke passes; a shower bath from above thoroughly washes this smoke, and the metallic particles which would otherwise float away upon the atmosphere are thus arrested and precipitated to the bottom of the drum. By this means, all the metal in the ore is saved, which is an achievement not hither to compassed by any of our reduction machinery. Mrs. Hall's invention has been patented, and in a letter from the Department at Washington she was assured that there was no piece of mechanism gotten up for similar purposes, in the Patent Office, which could at all compete with this invention of hers. Let all who have the mining interest of California at heart, bestow upon Mrs. Hall's smelting apparatus the attention its importance deserves.
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