304 NATURAL SCIENCE [November 1898 
THE Mount Rarnsow GOoLp-FIELD, QUEENSLAND 
THE basalt capping of the flat-topped and steep-sloped hills of the 
Mount Rainbow gold-fields in Queensland rest upon a sediment of 
wash of 2 or 3 feet of rounded and subangular pebbles and boulders 
of granite, quartzite, and other rocks of the Gympic formation, 
cemented in a grit of quartz, felspar, hornblende, and mica grains, 
overlaid by a white tenaceous, horizontally bedded, clayey sand. 
This latter deposit is often 10-15 feet in thickness, and rests on a 
horizontal floor of granite. This wash averages gold to the amount 
of 1 oz 11 dwts. 18 grs. per ton, and the cost for crushing is 
12s. 6d. per ton, as against £1 per quartz.’ Much useless material 
has to be crushed, owing to the hardness of the cement. The gold 
occurs in rounded or flattened water worn grains, and is all 
obtained from the lowest 2 or 3 inches of wash, and the uppermost 
2 or 3 inches of decomposed granite floor. A full account of the 
geology will be found in No. 126 of the Geological Survey 
publications. 
VircHow’s LECTURE 
As the Saturday Review reminds us, the selection of Professor 
Virchow as this year’s Huxley lecturer was a quaint method of 
doing honour to Huxley's memory. The lecture itself was a 
brilliant statement of the growth of the cellular views of pathology 
and their influence on medical work,—an eminently suitable subject 
with which to associate Huxley's name. Virchow sketched the 
growth of theories regarding vitalism and the gradual development 
of the cellular theory. He insisted in its corollary that the organism 
is not an individual but a social mechanism. He referred to the 
appheation of the cellular theory to pathology due to his own work, 
which was an indirect outcome of the biological principle omnis 
cellula e cellula. This principle also explains heredity, while it over- 
throws some of the most elaborately constructed theories as to the 
hereditary nature of some diseases. Modern theories of malaria, anti- 
septic surgery and artificial immunization against diseases are also con- 
sequences of the theory of cellular pathology. In the early part of 
the lecture Virchow paid a warm tribute to Huxley, admiration for 
whom he said “is deeply rooted within me.” But later on there 
came an unnecessary reminder of former controversy by the remark 
that “ Huxley had no hesitation in filling the gaps which Darwin 
had left in his argument,” and by a reservation that “whatever 
opinion one may hold as to the origin of mankind,” so that Virchow 
now, as in 1895, is still opposed to the application of evolution 
to man. 
