"Prospecting For Gold, Etc.
A very handy tool is the horn spoon. It can be carried in the pocket and the gold pan left at home, when prospecting for samples. It is made by cutting the belly out of a large dark ox horn, the darker the better. It will show up colors and it is very handy to take small samples With. Some carry a blowpipe outfit and the chemicals that go with it would make a small drug store, and the first upset you have, and I always have two or three, your chemicals will go glimmering and perhaps spoil a lot of good grub or blankets. But if you wish to take one along they can be bought from, most any jewelry supply house for fifty or seventy-five cents, and with the flame of a common candle you can practice, taking a few grains of ore, put them on a piece of charcoal, blow the candle flame on it and perhaps melt a small button of gold or copper and tin and mixed metal. Your tests with a blowpipe cannot be carried far without a lot of dope and it belongs more to the laboratory than the field, and personally I don't like to bother with them."
http://www.oldandsold.com/articles35/prospecting-8.shtml

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Note added at 18 mins (2012-12-27 15:21:09 GMT)
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see also

"The California Gold Rush
... http://overthecrescentmoon.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-californ...
http://overthecrescentmoon.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-californ...

"In hunting for gold, some things are indispensable, though experience will suggest a substitute for many very useful tools. The auriferous dirt and gravel must be taken up and separated with care from the gold, if you are to know in what quantity the gold is present; and for this work the pick, shovel and gold pan are the tools commonly used, though some experienced prospectors take a shovel, and hatchet, or knife only, when making a long cruise with a light pack; others go still lighter, with a knife and a horn spoon or a tin cup, but one cannot learn to use such an outfit successfully in a week, and they are slow at best... The horn, sometimes called the great horn spoon, is useful to test a small quantity of dirt or crushed gold ore with, where water is scarce. It is used in about the same manner as a pan, and for the same purpose. It is made by cutting the outer arc from a cow's horn and scraping it down thin and smooth, making a boat-shaped tool holding about half a pint and weighing but a trifle."
http://nevada-outback-gems.com/placer_gold/Placer_prospectin...


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Note added at 20 mins (2012-12-27 15:22:58 GMT)
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I pasted the link twice underneath 'The California Gold Rush' instead of pasting as follows:
"Last week, we finished reading By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman, a comical novel about a boy and his butler who run away to the gold fields of California in 1849."