PROCEEDINGS FOR 188G 



XCIII 



matter conipo^iine; it being .su|)posed to have been in some mysterious 

 manner taken down to the central tire, and then again brought up to 

 within a few feet of the surface. This double disjilacement of the solid 

 matter of the lithosphère is wholl}^ unexplained. On the 26th July, 

 1865, the following letter was written to the editor of some journal in 

 Europe whose name 1 have iiot recorded : 



" 1 have to acknowledge the receipt and to thank you for your letter 

 of 25th March last. Also for the very favourable opinion you do me the 

 honour to express respecting my labours in this colony. I only regret 

 that the map is not more worthy of the distinction which you propose to 

 confer on it — that of reproducing it in a reduced form in your widely 

 circulated journal. 



. — \ /oA^ec en. a-t,^ 



" Whilst you were writing me in March, I was engaged making a 

 cursory examination of the eastern corner of the colony. Xearly the 

 whole of it is covered with thick and in places impenetrable forests, with- 

 out a road or track of any kind. It is generally mountainous and inter- 

 sected by deep valleys and ravines, with rapid and constantly flowing 

 brooks and rivers. Neither the grazier nor the gold-miner has as ^^et 

 occupied it, though to the latter it otfers many favourable indications. 



" Geologically it presents one very interesting feature, which, I think, 

 clearly points to the probable purely metamorphic origin of the granite 

 masses associated with the Silurian or older rocks of our gold-tields. In 

 it I found that the tops of all the hills were com])osed of the ordinary 

 shales and sandstones, with quartz-veins, of our gold-fields, but that the 

 beds of the streams and bottoms of valleys and ravines were all granite. 



