The Scottish Natu7'alist. 313 



sixteenth century, — at facts showing whether, at that time, gold- 

 quartz — as well as alluvial gold — was found and worked. 



The Cottonian Reporter complains both of the ignorance and 

 apathy of the miners in not looking for this auriferous quartz where 

 it was likely to occur : and the justness of his complaint is sup- 

 ported by Atkinson, who tells us, for instance, that the miners of 

 Cornelius De Vois "never sought gold in solid places^ . . . never 

 sought on high hills or solid places for a ded or vein of 

 gold " ^ But Atkinson, too, had his own strong conviction that 

 gold-quartz was to be found if properly searched for. " These 

 brows or braes," he says, '' are likely to turn rich if diligently 

 sought, and the vein or bed is not far from the gold gotten in 

 the valleys.^ There is," he affirms, " much natural gold com- 

 monly found near the river sides, washed from the veins or bed 

 in mountains." 



The Cottonian Reporter has the same idea, that the nuggets 

 found in the valleys were washed or worn out of veins of gold 

 occurring high up on the hills.^ 



Atkinson says of Bulmer, " By help of a water-course he got 

 much straggling gold on the skirts of the hills and in the valleys, 

 but no7ie in solid places ^ * Nuggets are " supposed to descend 

 from the bedd of gold : but no bedd as yett thereof was found 

 thereat."^ 



The word " ore " is sometimes used by the old chroniclers ; 

 and we are told of its having been sent abroad to be '' fined " or 

 " refined." The term may have been applied equally to nuggets 

 or gold-quartz, or both — or even to auriferous brown or other 

 spars, rocks, or minerals.^ But in all probability it was applied 

 usually, if not always, to nuggets. Thus Queen Mary of Guise 

 "was presented with a piece of ore weighing 3 oz." (Fittis). 

 This is not likely to have been other than a nugget. 



The term " shaft " is another that, like so many, is equally appli- 

 cable to the excavation of loose and solid material — of clay or of 

 rock. Up to the present day the sinking of shafts is spoken of 

 in the surface soil. Thus Dr Porteous tells us (p. 50) that in 

 1863 the Leadhill miners sank a " shaft" — probably in the till — 

 at the head of the Longcleuch Burn, where "the debris is above 



^ Calvert, pp. 144, 145. ^ Ibid., p. 154. '^ Ibid., p. 138. 



* Ibid., p. 148. 5 Porteous, p. 42. 



^ There may be in the Crawford district, as there are in other auriferous 

 countries, auriferous metallic sulphurets, especially tlie pyrites or blendes of 

 iron, lead, copper, or zinc. 



