576 president's address. 



Davey, that such appliances have been employed. From these 

 mines about 65,000 ounces of silver were obtained last year, the 

 average yield of the ore being at the rate of about 110 ounces of 

 silver per ton of ore, taken from various depths to 145 feet. The 

 lodes, which are from 4 to 9 feet wide, traversing Devonian 

 shales and belts of felspar porphyry, consist of quartz with 

 blue clay, containing pyrites, galena, blende, gold, and sulphide 

 and chloride of silver. 



From the Sunny Corner mine, Mitchell's Creek, argentiferous 

 sulphides are being worked and shipped to England for treatment. 



Other silver bearing lodes have been tested in the Hartley, 

 Macleay, Yass, Bega, and other districts, with as yet unsatis- 

 factory results ; but tbe recent discoveries at Thackaringa and 

 Silverton, in the Albert district, are of a most promising character. 

 Here ferruginous galena lodes, yielding rich specimens of 

 chloride of silver, have been found in places within a tract of 

 country 30 miles long and 15 miles wide. The lodes strike about 

 north and south, and vary in width up to 4 feet : the formation 

 of the country is mica schist with granite, and porphyry. 



Iron. 



Another of our great sources of future wealth which is also 

 in its infantile stage of developement is iron mining. With 

 our rapid national progress our demands for iron and steel are 

 greatly increasing ; but while other more easily developed in- 

 dustries chiefly engage, as they now do, the attention of the 

 present scanty population of the Colony, and thereby keep up the 

 price of labour, the growth of this particular industry must 

 necessarily be slow. Nevertheless it is satisfactory to know that 

 we possess inexhaustible supplies of the raw material — iron ores, 

 coal, limestone, and manganese — and that these are readily 

 available whenever circumstances admit of their being more 

 profitably worked. Near Mittagong and Berrima extensive 

 deposits of rich limonite occur in the midst of a coal field, but the 

 attempt to work them at Fitzroy proved a failure. Since then 

 the Eskbank Iron Company have established smelting works 



