If for a brief momenta few dividends lend the brightness of hope to the lurid financial atmosphere the rays are shortlived and darkness close once again around the horizon. The rich vein of quartz has pinched out, so says your Jupiter, i.e., the claim manager ; and what outsider shall gainsay 7dm, is he not absolutely delivered over, bound hand and foot, into Jupiter's hands ? So fresh calls are made to find the lode again ; or mayhap it has sunk down, and must he followed and cut at a lower level. , In any case calls, calls, calls, toujours calls, till the thing becomes monotonous. We hear much about the untold - mineral wealth of New Zealand, which I am inclined to think would have remained untold for a century or two had it not been for Wellman's dredger, the cheap, certain, riskless developer of boundless wealth. The advantages of this machine are: 1. Its cheapness— a machine with engine and all appliances calculated to lift from 100 to 200 tons per hour, fitted up on the ground if anywhere within reasonable dis'ance from Dunedin, say 100 miles, can be obtained at between £1300 to £1500. 2 Its certainty of despatch as already tested, and the ease with which it can be managed. 3. The enormous quantity of material whioh can be put through in a day of 16 hours in two shifts, makes what would be looked on as worthless staff under ordinary circumstances, to be caet aside as utterly beyond paying, a valuable patch. For one grain to the ton, value 2d, yields a cent, per cent, return, the cost of obtaining it by the process under consideration being a shade under a penny ; 3 grains is good, 6 grains a fortune, 3 or 4 pennyweight untold wealth. 4. There is no need to waste time in pros pecting for new fields, almost every part of the beaches from the Waiau to Oamaru, a distance of several hundred miles, have from ascertained tests a sufficiencyjof gold to supply the trifling demand of Welman'g dredger to make a certainty of success. The Clutha, with its tributaries, the Shotover, the Arrow, theKawarau; indeed, every river ia Otago known to contain gold, can be made to diegorge its treasures hidden away when Adam was a little boy, and added to yearly since that long bygone time. 