24 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB vol. xiil. 



Against which the following facts are urged in favour 

 of the mechanical theory : — 



1. Deposits of placer-gold are always found adjacent 

 to and lying below districts traversed by auriferous veins, 

 and nowhere else. 



2. The areas where the quartz veins occur have 

 certainly suffered great erosion, and great mechanical 

 forces have undoubtedly been for countless ages in action. 



3. The' conditions in which the placer gold is found, 

 mingled with rolled fragments of quartz and in the 

 irregularities of the surface of the bed-rock, prove the 

 accumulations of gold to be mechanical. A deposit from 

 chemical solution would not be thus circumstanced and 

 localized. 



4. The nuggets and coarsest gold are always found 

 nearest the outcrops of the quartz veins. 



5. Pebbles and fragments of gold-bearing quartz arc 

 found in the placers which must have been derived from 

 the neighbouring veins, and often nuggets have fragments 

 of quartz still adhering to them. 



6. The surfaces of nuggets bear almost always in- 

 contestable evidence of the battering they have sustained. 

 They are generally rolled and rounded, and the surface is 

 such as could be produced only by blows and friction ; 

 whereas, if the gold were deposited from solution, much 

 of it would be found crystallized and forming strings and 

 sheets running through the j)orous matter. 



Such are the arguments that can be adduced, and I 

 leave it to the members of the CAuh to determine which 

 may be considered to have the greater weight. 



