304 NATURAL SCIENCE [November 1898 



The Mount Eainbow Gold-Field, Queensland 



The basalt capping of the flat-topped and steep-sloped hills of the 

 Mount Eainbow gold-fields in Queensland rest upon a sediment of 

 wash of 2 or 3 feet of rounded and subangular pebbles and boulders 

 of granite, quartzite, and other rocks of the Gympic formation, 

 cemented in a grit of quartz, felspar, hornblende, and mica grains, 

 overlaid by a white tenaceous, horizontally bedded, clayey sand. 

 This latter deposit is often 10-15 feet in thickness, and rests on a 

 horizontal floor of granite. This wash averages gold to the amount 

 of 1 oz. 11 dwts. 18 grs. per ton, and the cost for crushing is 

 12s. 6d. per ton, as against £1 per quartz. Much useless material 

 has to be crushed, owing to the hardness of the cement. The gold 

 occurs in rounded or flattened water worn grains, and is all 

 obtained from the lowest 2 or 3 inches of wash, and the uppermost 

 2 or 3 inches of decomposed granite floor. A full account of the 

 geology will be found in No. 126 of the Geological Survey 

 publications. 



Viechow's Lectuke 



As the Saturday Review reminds us, the selection of Professor 

 Virchow as this year's Huxley lecturer was a quaint method of 

 doing honour to Huxley's memory. The lecture itself was a 

 brilliant statement of the growth of the cellular views of pathology 

 and their influence on medical work, — an eminently suitable subject 

 with which to associate Huxley's name. Virchow sketched the 

 growth of theories regarding vitalism and the gradual development 

 of the cellular theory. He insisted in its corollary that the organism 

 is not an individual but a social mechanism. He referred to the 

 application of the cellular theory to pathology due to his own work, 

 which was an indirect outcome of the biological principle omnis 

 ccllula e cellula. This principle also explains heredity, while it over- 

 throws some of the most elaborately constructed theories as to the 

 hereditary nature of some diseases. Modern theories of malaria, anti- 

 septic surgery and artificial immunization against diseases are also con- 

 sequences of the theory of cellular pathology. In the early part of 

 the lecture Virchow paid' a warm tribute to Huxley, admiration for 

 whom he said " is deeply rooted within me." But later on there 

 came an unnecessary reminder of former controversy by the remark 

 that " Huxley had no hesitation in filling the gaps which Darwin 

 had left in his argument," and by a reservation that " whatever 

 opinion one may hold as to the origin of mankind," so that Virchow 

 now, as in 1895, is still opposed to the application of evolution 

 to man. 



