48 The Scottish Naturalist. 



In 1862, having returned to this country, I stated to the 

 "British Association" at Cambridge, that "The auriferous 

 resources of Otago are only beginning to be developed, and will 

 only be fully developed in the course of many years, by the 

 addition of Quartz-mining and others of the skilled branches of 

 Gold-mining, to the shallow or alluvial digging to which the 

 miners' operations are at present mainly confined. This im- 

 plies a greater concentration of attention than at present on the 

 auriferous quartzites, from which the drift or alluvial gold has 

 originally been derived; the working whereof, should these 

 quartzites exist to any extent, is much more likely to yield a 

 steadily remunerative employment, and a permanent and 

 valuable source of revenue than the said alluvial digging (p. 2)." 

 Of the Coromandel gold field (Auckland) I reported — "The 

 auriferous quartzites are frequently developed to an extent as 

 yet unknown in Otago (p. 1)." . . . "The Coromandel 

 slates are characterised by their prominent and numerous Quartz- 

 reefs, consisting of auriferous quartzites " (p. 2). . . . I 

 adverted also to " The scarcity of the auriferous drifts and the 

 abundance of the parent quartzites" (p. 2); and summed up, 

 "that while there is at Coromandel a veiy limited and insig- 

 nificant field for alluvial digging, there is ample scope for 

 Quartz mining " (p. 3). . . . " that slates similar to those 

 of Coromandel, with associated auriferous quartzites, will be 

 found to occur over a comparatively large area of the Province 

 of Auckland ; . . . and that new gold-fields remain to be 

 discovered in that Province" * (p. 3). 



In 1863, in a " Special Programme" of a Conversazione of the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh (in February), descriptive of a 

 series of Geological exhibits which I had collected in New 

 Zealand in 1861, 1 drew attention to the "Gold-fields of Otago, 

 characterized by their Alluvial deposits or Drifts," and the "Gold 

 field of Coromandel ( Auckland),characterized by its Quartz-reek'" 

 pointing out the " general resemblance of the auriferous slates 

 of Otago to the metamorphic slates (of Lower Silurian age) of 

 the Scottish Grampians;" and deducing therefrom the "probable 



* These quotations are from two Papers on (1) The Geology of the 

 Gold-fields of Otago, N. Z. ; and (2) The Geology of the Gold-fields of 

 Auckland, N. Z. ; published in "The Proceedings of the Geological Section 

 of the British Association at Cambridge," in October, 1862: Reprints of 

 4 pp. (Otago) and 3 pp. (Auckland). 



