Humbolt on the Precious Metals.—In a tract upon the fluctuations in the production of gold, recently put forth by M.

Von Humboldt, the following facts are given:— “We learn from the acute researches of Boekh, how on the opening of the East by the Persian wars, and by the expedition of the great Macedonian to India, gold gradually accumulated in European Greece, so that in the time of Demosthenes, for example, the precious metals had sunk to a fifth of the value which they had in the days of Solon.

The stream then ran from east to west, and so copious was the influx of gold, that its relative value to silver, which in the time of Herodotus, was 13 to 1, was at the death of Alexander, only as 10 to 1. The less universal were the communications of trade in the ancient world, the greater and more sudden must have been the alterations in the relative value of gold and silver.

Thus, in consequence of the local accumulations of the precious metals, we find that in Rome, just after the conquest of Syracuse, gold was to silver as 17 1-7 to 1: whereas, under Julius Cæsar, its relative value was, for some time, but as 8 1-¾ to 1. The less the quantity of the precious metals actually existing in a country, the more easily can a sudden influx of them occasion these excessive variations of their value.

The civilized world is at present assured of stability in the value of the precious metals, by the extent and rapidity of the commerce which establishes their equilibrium, and by the great quantities of gold and silver already collected.

After the revolution in Spanish America, the annual production of the precious metals fell, for some years, to one-third of its former amount, yet the oscillations of their relative value, during that period, were slight, and hardly ascribable to the decreased production.”

The writer further states that the mass of the precious metals brought to Europe from the discovery of America till the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, was 10.400,000 Castilian marks of gold, (worth about three hundred millions sterling,) and 533.700,000 marks of silver; together worth 5,940 millions of piastres.

The silver taken from the American mines in the abovementioned period would be, when refined, sufficient to form a ball, or solid globe, of pure silver, eighty-nine feet in diameter.

The produce of the Russian gold mines in 1837 was valued at 800,000l..

In the United States, the production of gold increased, from 1824 to 1834—from the value of 5.000 to that of 898,000 dollars; since that time it has considerably declined.

The gold was found chiefly in North Carolina and Georgia.

The amount of the precious metals drawn from the mines of Siberia and of the United States are inconsiderable in comparison with that from the mines of Mexico and Peru; yet they are sufficient to disprove the supposition formerly entertained, that large deposits were confined to tropical countries.