34 The Ottawa Naturalist. [May 



assume large proportions at some time, though there are not the 

 large profits which are obtainable from the mines of the eastern 

 district. 



Gold. 



The mining of the precious metals has always possessed a 

 charm for many persons, though there is probably no enterprise 

 in which more money has been lost than in the attempt to 

 obtain gold from the hard matrix in which it is usually found. 

 Still there is always a great fascination to most persons in the I 

 term gold-mining, though the ideas many people possess on the >j 

 subject are exceedingly crude. The discovery of gold in any 

 country usually gives rise to much excitement, and this is often 

 in direct ratio to the remoteness of the locality where the find is 

 reported. Gold mining has too large an element of uncertainty 

 in it to be pursued by the ordinary citizen with profit. To say 

 nothing of the capricious nature of this mineral itself there is 

 often the temptation on the part of the unscrupulous miner to 

 salt his claim and thus impose on the ignorance or credulity of 

 'his neighbour. Then there is frequently the dishonesty of the 

 assayer to whom the samples selected as a fair test of the pro- 

 perty are sent and of these, I regret to say, the making of false 

 returns is sometimes a matter of business in order that more 

 samples, and the necessary fees for testing the same, may come 

 his way. In fact, some of these assayers have been known to 

 boast that they could get an assay of gold from any kind of 

 rock, or even from a piece of brick if necessary ; so that the 

 report of a so-called assayer, for there are some that disgrace 

 the name, is not always to be relied on as absolutely correct. 



The gold of the Ottawa district may be said to belong to 

 the Huronian belt of rocks which traverse a portion of Ontario 

 in the counties of Addington, Hastings, Lanark and Renfrew^ 

 and which also crosses the Ottawa River into the province of 

 Quebec. These rocks have been described in the reports of the 

 Geological Survey under the head of the Hastings series. They 

 have been by some regarded as a portion of the Laurentian 



