120 REPORT— 1891. 



veiled contempt which the former entertained for the latter 

 some twenty or thirty years ago. 



Gold-mining natm-ally takes first place among the mineral 

 industries of Victoria, the yield of gold up to date from the 

 colony having greatly exceeded that from any of the sister 

 States, while its yield of other metallic products has so far 

 been comparatively insignificant. 



It is unnecessary to do more than glance at the early 

 history of gold-mining in Victoria. It is known that Sir 

 Eoderick Murchison, before any recorded discovery, expressed 

 his belief in the existence of gold in Australia on the evidence 

 of specimens of the Silurian rocks of that continent. Very 

 likely other scientific men arrived at the same opinion, if 

 they did not actually ascertain the existence of the metal. 



There are numerous stories as to the finding of gold by 

 shepherds, convict-servants, and others prior to the year 1850 ; 

 but there appears little room for doubt that the public interest 

 excited by the great discoveries in California led to the sys- 

 tematic search for gold — first in New South Wales and then 

 in Victoria — by men of practical experience ; and the marked 

 success achieved was followed by the memorable "rush" of 

 the early fifties. 



Every Australian has heard of, if he did not actually par- 

 ticipate in, that "rush," and knows that within two or three 

 years there poured into Victoria, by tens of thousands, a body 

 of men the equal of which, for collective enterprise, courage, 

 and vigour, had perhaps never before been congregated within 

 so small an area of the w^orld's sui'face. 



This great prospecting population overspread the land, 

 searching every likely or unlikely locality, with the result 

 that, during the ten years following the first "rush," nearly 

 all the more important alluvial fields, where the metal was 

 easily obtained, were discovered, and, to a large extent, ex- 

 hausted of their more accessible riches. 



Some remarks as to the geological conditions in relation to 

 Victorian goldfields are here requisite, though those conditions 

 are probably familiar enough to most of the present audience. 

 Over about half of the entire area of Victoria the older 

 PahBOzoic, Lower and Upper Silurian rocks, metamorphic 

 schists, and granites appear at or close to the surface. 



With a few local exceptions these older Palaeozoic sedi- 

 mentary rocks and metamorphic schists have a general 

 northerly-and-southerly strike, and are highly inclined in a 

 series of anticlinal and synclinal foldings across the entire 

 breadth, east-and-west, of their exposure, covering about seven 

 degrees of longitude. They are intersected by lodes, reefs, and 

 veins of quartz, the normal trend of which is closely coin- 

 cident with their strike ; and the quartz reefs are, as a rule, 



