Rocks and Ore Occurrences. 3 



noi'th. From one pit only twenty feet deep and about 7 feet 

 long he obtained 100 ounces of gold from specimen quartz, and it 

 is easy to see that by the denudation of a band of rock such as 

 this lying nearly parallel to the avei'age trend of the valley, these 

 little pockets, even at some distance apart, would be ample to 

 supply the alluvial gold. 



The granitic area at Granite Flat is really one of a quartz 

 diorite. The rock slide shows plagioclase felspar, green and 

 brown hornblende, some mica in places, and pegmatitic quartz 

 full of solid inclusions that are very minute and may be rutile. 

 The area is traversed by fissure veins that seem generally to be 

 small. Some of those that run in an east and west direction 

 have copper pyrites as a lode filling, one that seemed larger than 

 the average (i.e. that on the Empress of India lease) had copper 

 pyrites, iron pyrites, quartz, carbonate of lime and gold, and a 

 copper sulphide much resembling " glance " in appearance but not 

 so rich as that mineral in copper. A full discussion of the occur- 

 rences would be, however, somewhat outside of the scope of this 

 paper. 



The area that is undoubtedly of metamorphic rocks includes the 

 Little 8nowy Creek. In this area there is a strip of country 

 from Mount Elmo through Scrubby Creek, Lockhart's Gap and 

 Bethanga, along which, at greater or less intervals, rich gold 

 deposits are found. The deposits are not always in large lodes, 

 and occasionally they are not in well marked ones, but this latter 

 is the exception. The deposits ai-e undoubtedly valuable from an 

 economic point of view as well as interesting from the scientific 

 one. Eastward of this series is one of tin occurrences that I 

 have not been able personally to see tn situ., but they appear to 

 extend from a point a few miles eastward of Mount Elmo, to 

 across the Mitta Mitta at Eskdale, and thence to Tallangatta 

 and to the Murray River. The specimens that have reached me 

 are all of greisen with cassiterite in very coarse crystals. The 

 occurrences are doubtless isolated ones and so far have not been 

 " proved " from an economic point of view, but this by no means 

 indicates them to be worthless ; indeed, the general want of 

 knowledge locally as regards ore treatment prevents these tin 

 deposits from being fairly tested at the present date. 



