354 ^'^^^ Scottish Naturalist. 



character, involving denial that the most painstaking search ever 

 succeeded in demonstrating the occurrence of gold in *' solid 

 places," "beds," " seames," or " vaines " — that is, in any kind of 

 rock ifi situ. 



Nor is it surprising, considering the mixture of fiction with 

 fact; the infusion of narrative with superstition, credulity, pre- 

 judice, ignorance; the use of a technical, partly local, partly 

 foreign jargon, long since obsolete, and now scarcely intelli- 

 gible, that characterised the quaint old chronicles of the six- 

 teenth and seventeenth centuries, that difficulty should exist — 

 and of an insuperable kind, apparently — in reconciling the con- 

 flicting evidence, or of collecting evidence at all of a satisfactory 

 kind. 



But it is not a little surprising that such a difficulty — and quite 

 as great, apparently — should exist at the present day, or should 

 have existed in quite recent times. That it does exist, evi- 

 dence was furnished in the last instalment of these contribu- 

 tions,^ in the discrepant evidence of Professor Harkness, Profes- 

 sor Geikie, Dr Wilson, Mr Dudgeon, and the Rev. Dr Porteous, 

 regarding the auriferous quartz of the Wanlockhead district. 



The amazing difficulty of obtaining, in the first place, simple 

 evidence as to \ki^ facts of a find; the impossibility sometimes of 

 so sifting a superabundant mass of evidence as to ascertain what 

 is trustworthy ; the niceties involved in striking the balance of 

 probability when evidence is conflicting and bewildering; the 

 discrepancies in opinion between experts themselves, and the 

 greater and radical diff"erences between scientific and practical 

 men ; the frequent errors of the former, the savants^ and the 

 equally common correctness of the views of the latter, the mere 

 miners or diggers, — all become more prominent, more fully 

 illustrated in connection not only with a special subject, but with 

 a special object ; not only with the determination of what appears 

 to be a very simple matter — viz., whether auriferous quartz exists 

 in a given district, but with the even simpler matter at first sight 

 — viz., whether a given piece of gold-quartz is or is not the pro- 

 duce of — native to — a certain locality. * 



Hence it is that all these or other difficulties, dubieties, or per- 

 plexities have arisen in connection with three now well-known 

 museum specimens of gold-quartz — all of them labelled or described 

 as having been not only found at, but as being indubitable natives 

 of, Wanlockhead, Dumfriesshire, or Leadhills, Lanarkshire. The 



^ Vide ' Scottish Naturalist,' pp. 315-317. 



