302 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



While Melbourne is thus favored, mines of immense value have 

 been opened at Mount Ballaret and Mount Alexander, about eighty 

 to one hundred miles north of the city. The treasure taken from 

 these two deposites alone, from the 1st of December, 1851, to the 1st of 

 April, 1852, amounted to about $9,000,000. 



The first discovery of gold was made near Bathurst, in New South 

 Wales, on the 22d May, 1851, from 150 to 164 miles west of Sidney. 

 The localities first worked were at Summerville Creek, Abercrombie 

 river, from whence further discoveries have been made over a vast 

 mountain region of country. From May to the 6th September the 

 shipments reached $750,000, and on the 8th November about $1,000,- 

 000. Lumps were occasionally found weighing from twenty to 

 twenty-seven pounds. In December, 1851, the parties at the diggings 

 in Victoria were estimated at from eight to ten thousand, and near 

 Bathurst, at four thousand. The whole amount sent to England since 

 the discovery in May, 1851, is estimated at twenty millions. The gold 

 region already discovered in Australia promises to yield double and 

 triple the quantity of gold, by the same number of laborers, over that 

 obtained iii California. Good observers suppose it to extend over an 

 area of not less than 15 to 20,000 square miles, the whole area of the 

 island being estimated at about three million square miles. 



Accounts from Australia to November, 1852, state that the produc- 

 tion of gold is on the increase, and many of the stories which are 

 received would seem almost incredible, were they not fully corrobo- 

 rated by actual receipts. Not only do the old diggings yield abun- 

 dantly, but new ones are found daily of wide extent. To show that the 

 recent accounts must be founded in truth, it is said that the receipts 

 from Mount Alexander and Ballarat diggings alone, are given in the 

 Australia papers at one million seven hundred thousand nine hundred 

 and seventy-four ounces, or between seventy-three and seventy-four 

 tons, iji ten months. From the entire Victoria gold fields, in the same 

 period, the receipts had been one hundred and five tons. The 

 amount of gold actually exported from the country from October, 

 1851, to September, 1852, amounted to over forty millions of dollars. 



The assays made of the Australian gold show that it is somewhat 

 purer than that obtained in California. The assays of the United 

 States Mint, at Philidelphia, give a fineness of 966 thousandths. Making 

 an allowance for melting, this gives a value to the native grains of 

 about $19 60 per ounce. Assays that have been made in England 

 are reported to have given the result of 938 thousandths fine. Upon 

 these facts, it is presumed that Australian gold is better than Califor- 

 nia or, in other words, that it contains less silver by six or seven per 

 cent, on the average. 



Gold in Australia. A report has been presented to the Imperial 

 Geological Society of Vienna relative to the production of gold in 

 Austria. Austria produces the most gold of any European State. It 

 amounts yearly to 7,500 marks, which promises a sum of 603,000 

 ducats. Much of this is obtained by the Gipseys by sand-washing in 

 Hungary and Siebenburgen. There are two ways in which the gold 



