2 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



and the head of Little Snowy Creek, as being an axis of very old 

 rocks, such as would make the exposure from there down to as 

 far as the so-called hornfelds at Ensay in Gippsland, to be really 

 that of the oldest rocks to be seen in Victoria.^ 



There are also some unmarked exposures of holocystalline 

 rocks along the Snowy Creek, one at about seven miles to the 

 southward of Granite Flat is of considerable size, and larger than 

 some exposures that are marked as being granitic. But these 

 holocrystalline rocks of the district have in most cases, even 

 where originally intrusive, undoubtedly undergone great changes 

 just as have the schists, and all these cases illustrate the difficul- 

 ties arising out of the present official nomenclature. The holo- 

 crystalline rocks on the western bank of the Mitta Mitta, about 

 six miles southward from Tallangatta, form one case in point, 

 and those much to the southward in the Ensay district furnish 

 another case. 



The occurrence of gold at Lightning Creek, at the head of the 

 Snowy Creek toward Mount AVills, presents an interest from the 

 fact that rich alluvial was found in the creek in the early gold 

 digging days, and that the diggers, reasoning from the analogies 

 elsewhere, made many attempts to find the lode from which it 

 had been supposed to have been shed. The country is, however, 

 of the heaviest character for prospecting ; with steep hillsides, 

 narrow rapid creeks and much timber and scrub, and up to the 

 present date that lode has never been found. The rocks are silky 

 micaceous schists and quartzites, and it does not seem necessary 

 to postulate the presence of a large lode to account for the coarse 

 alluvial gold. Quite recently Mr. J. F. McCann has obtained 

 much rich coarse gold from a spot that years ago had been cleared 

 of its timber and had had the trestles of a large flume erected 

 upon it by men who were prospectors by instinct, without the 

 gold being seen at the time. This was on a spur facing to the 

 south west at the junction of the Lightning and Snowy Creeks, 

 and the deposit of gold was in a thin irregular seam of quartz, 

 parallel to the ancient bedding planes of the present schists that 

 are now nearly upright and lying about 20 degrees west of true 



1 The author would refer to the highly interesting and important work upon the 

 rocks at Ensay and Omeo, by Mr. A. W. Howitt, and published in the Proceedings of the 

 Boyal Society of Victoria, and in the Victorian Departmental publications. 



