84 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1907 
hand information in the matter, the authors, who are 
familiar with the geology of the district, collected typical 
material from the eastern outcrop, and this was carefully 
assayed by Mr Ernest A. Wraight, A.R.S.M., in the 
Metallurgical Laboratories of the Royal School of Mines. 
The result was to prove that the sample of conglomerate 
collected did indeed contain a small amount of both gold 
and silver. That the conglomerate is auriferous is there- 
fore a matter of fact and not of supposition; but it 
still remains to be proved that the gold occurs in any 
part of the rock, either at or below the surface, in sufficient 
quantity to be workable with profit. 
Should the average gold content of the conglomerate 
prove on further investigation to be high enough for pro- 
fitable working, there are several considerations which 
point to the conclusion that the exploitation of the ore in 
the Forest of Dean might be easier and less expensive than 
in the Transvaal. In the first place, the amount of the 
conglomerate along the outcrop, or very near the surface, 
where it could be worked Open-cast, is very great, and 
there is no reason to doubt that it is everywhere con- 
tinuous underground within the area of the ring-shaped 
outcrop; secondly, the dip of the “reef” is on the whole 
much less steep than in the case of the “banket reef” of 
the Transvaal, so that it probably never attains as great a 
depth in the Forest of Dean as in South Africa; this fact 
would have an important bearing upon the cost of raising 
it from deep levels; and thirdly, the disturbances which 
have affected the basin in the Forest are nothing like 
so profound as in the goldfield of the Witwatersrand. In 
the latter region, the reefs are locally much dislocated and 
thrown by faults and fractures, resulting from earth move- 
ments which have occurred since the beds were deposited. 
These are absent or of minor character in the Forest, and 
the working of bedded ore, whether of gold or of iron, 
