STAG 1808

STAG

1808

STAMP-MILI

at Paris, July 14, 1817, leaving unfinished her Considerations upon the French Revolution, published by her children and thought by Sainte-Beuve to be her finest work. See Life by Stevens and Life and Times by Norris.

Stag, the male of the red deer which is found all over Europe and in a large part of Asia. It is a noble animal, about seven feet long, and four feet high at the shoulders, with large, branching antlers. It has been driven from inhabited districts, and is now found only in de^p forests. In Scotland it is hunted by a form of stalking, but in England on horseback. See Deer, Elk and Reindeer.

Sta'mens, in an ordinary flower the outer of the two sets of sporopbylls or sporangia! leaves, the carpels being the inner set. Stamens are microsporophylls, and the spores they produce are microspores (pollen-grains), See Flower.

Stam'ford, Conn., a town 33 miles northeast of New York, on Long Island Sound. It is a suburb of New York City and a summer-resort for the business men of the city, whose handsome homes are on all the surrounding hills. There are iron and bronze foundries, manufactories of hats, drugs, sashes, blinds and locks. The town was settled in 1641. Population 25,138.

Stamp-Act, a measure for raising revenue by requiring the use of government stamps on all legal documents used in the British colonies in America. It was passed in 1765, and was resisted by the colonies because they denied the right of th-i English Parliament to tax them without representation; that is, without their having a voice by their delegates in the matter. Riots took place in many towns, and the stamped paper was seized and destroyed. A congress of nine states met and claimed the right of taxation for their own assemblies. The stamp-act was repealed by Parliament- in February, 1766, after a great debate in which Burke made his first speech, and Pitt took the side of the colonists in one of his greatest speeches.

Stamp=MiIl. A stamp-mill is a mill in which ore is pounded into parti"les so fine that the metal it contains is separated from the ore-stuff. Stamp-mills are commonly used for crushirg gold or silver-bearing quartz. The stamps are stems of wrought iron two to three inches in diameter and ten to 15 feet long. At the bottom of the stem is a head eight to 12 inches in diameter and 15 to 20 inches long, into which is set a movable steel or cast-iron shoe, the diameter of which is the same as the head and the length somewhat less. When equipped, the stamp ordinarily weighs from 400 to 1,000 lbs. The ore is caught and crushed between the falling stamp and a die of the same material and diameter as the shoe. Ordinarily the ore is fed into a mortar-box containing five dies set on a level and in line. The box is enclosed, except for open-

. ings for the stems, the ore and water. Across the lower part of one side is stretched a screen of wire-mesh or perforated plate. The size of the openings in the screen is determined by the fineness of crushing required in order to separate the metal from

ten-stamp battery

the ore-stuff. The five stamps that pound in the same battery are dropped in succession, and so the ore and water are driven from side to side. Particles crushed sufficiently small are washed through the screen.

Before the ore is fed into the mortar-box it must be broken into fragments from one to three inches in diameter. This is usually done by a macnine called a rock-breaker, which rubs and presses the rocks between two hard, corrugated surfaces. In the modern stamp-mill the ore is dumped into great bins and then handled entirely by machinery.

The gold or silver that is free from chemical combination is caught on plates over which the stream of sand and water flows after leaving the battery. These plates are usually made of soft copper, which is rubbed with quicksilver until its surface forms an amalgam. This catches or amalgamates the gold or silver that comes in contact with it. The amalgam can then be scraped off and the gold 01 silver separated from the quicksilver. Sometimes gold is so fine that it floats on the surface of the water and does not touch the plate. Much of this floating gold can be caught on blankets over which the stream is made to flow. Still more important are the processes by which the chemical combinations containing gold or