: I 



GOLD. 



OONIATITES. 



Wo subjoin an account of the auriferous rock* of Australia from 

 the loture of Mr. Juke* : 



"Sir K. Murohuon, in his address to the Geographical Society in 

 1844, alluded to the pouibly auriferous character of the Great 

 Eastern Chain of Australia, being led thereto by his knowledge of 

 the auriferous chain of the Ural, and by hia examination of Count 

 Stnelccki's specimen*, maps, and sections. Some of Sir R. Murchi- 

 son's obeerrations having found their way to the Australian papers, a 

 Mr. Smith, at that time engaged in some iron works at Berrima, was 

 induced by them in the year 1849 to search for gold, and he found it. 

 He sent the gold to the Colonial government, and offered to disclose 

 iU locality on payment of 5001. The governor however not putting 

 full faith in the statement, and being, moreover, unwilling to encourage 

 gold fever without sufficient reason, declined to grant the sum, but 

 offered, if Mr. Smith would mention the locality, and the discovery 

 was found to be valuable, to reward him accordingly. Very unwisely, 

 a* it turns out, Mr. Smith did not accept this offer; and it remained 

 for Mr. Margraves, who came with the prestige of bis California.!! 

 experience, to re-make the discovery, and to get the reward from 

 government on their own conditions. 



" This first discovery was made in the banks of the Summer Hill 

 Creek and the Lewis Ponds River, small streams which run from tlm 

 northern flank of the Conobalas down to the Macquarrie. The gold 

 was found in the sand and gravel, accumulated especially on the 

 inside of the bends of the brook, and at the junction of the two 

 water-course*, where the stream of each would be often checked by 

 the other. It was coarse gold, showing its parent site to be at no 

 great distance, and probably in the quartz veins traversing the meta- 

 morphic rocks of the Conobalas. Mr. Stutchbury, the government 

 geologist, reported on the truth of the discovery, and shortly after- 

 wards found gold in several other localities, especially on the banks 

 of the Turon, some distance north-east of the Conobalas. This wrs 

 a much wider and more open valley than the Summer Hill Creek, 

 and the gold accordingly was much finer, occurring in small scales anil 

 flake*. It was however more regularly and equably distributed 

 through the soil, so that a man might reckon with the greater 

 certainty on the quantity his daily labour would return him. At the 

 head of the Turon River, among the dark glens and gullies in which 

 it collect* its bead waters, in the flanks of the Blue Mountains, the 

 gold got 'coarser,' occurring in larger lumps or nuggets, but these 

 being more sparingly Mattered. The reason of these circumstance*, 

 which are common, to all auriferous regions, has been given in the 

 former part of this Lecture when speaking of the power of moving 

 water. 



" With the subsequent history of the 'gold diggings ' of Australia, 

 the discovery of many rich auriferous districts, both in New South 

 Wale* and Victoria, you must all be more or less familiar. 



" In Mr. Arrowsmith's map, appended to the Parliamentary Report 

 just issued, all the auriferous spot* are marked in yellow. They occur 

 at intervals along the flanks of the Great Eastern Chain, or on its lateral 

 spurs and subordinate ranges through an extent of country about 

 1000 mile* in length, about as far as from London to Gibraltar or the 

 confine* of Turkey, or as from London to Iceland in a straight line. 

 The principal localities marked on this map are Grnfton Range and 

 Unmet River, north of the Condamine ; Stanley Creek and Canning 

 Downs in the Moreton Bay district ; several spots in the neighbour- 

 hood of Liverpool Plains; the Turon and Conobalas on the Mac- 

 quarrie, below Bathurst ; the Abercrombie River nt the head of the 

 Lachlan ; some spots on each side of Breadalbane Plains ; the Braid- 

 wood and Aralueu diggings in the Shoalhaven district; Lake Eimeo 

 in the Australian Alps ; and Ballarat, and Mount Alexander and 

 Mount BUckwood, north-west of Port Philip. 



" In every one of these localities granite and metamorphic rocks 

 occur, and quartz veins are frequently spoken of. This is an impor- 

 tant fact to bear in min.l. 



" In scarcely any of them do we find mention made of the gold 

 bring Men in the actual rock, but in the drift clay, aand, and gravel, 

 or lying loose on the surface of the ground. The hundredweight of 

 gold, indeed, found by Dr. Kcr north of Bathurst, is described as a 

 block of highly auriferous quartz, lying among a lot of other loose 

 block*, evidently derived from a broad quartx vein running up the 

 hill behind them. Such, a mass, indeed, could hardly be transported 

 far from iU original site by any conceivable current of water. 



"The superficial drift in which the diggings have been carried on 

 varies in thickness from a few inches to 20 or 30 feet. Th- following 

 1* an extract from a lecture given by a Mr. Gibbon, in Melbourne, and 

 reported in the ' Melbourne Argus,' giving an account of the Ballarat 

 digging* : ' On toe surface of the earth was turf in a layer of about 

 a foot thick, below which was a layer of rich black alluvial soil, and 

 below that gray clay; below that again was a description of red 

 gravel, which was sometime* very good ; then red or yellow clay, in 

 which gold was found ; and then a stratum, varying in thickness, of 

 clay streaked with various colours, and scarcely worth working ; and 

 the next stratum was of hard white pipe-clay, which was a decided 

 barrier. Immediately above it however was n thin layer of chocolate- 

 coloured clay, tough and soapy. This was the celebrated blue clay, 

 and was very rich. 



" ' The ground on which the diggings were situated was a sloping 



bank. The blue clay is found near the surface on the brow of the 

 hill, that is, at the depth of about a foot ; but it is sometimes 

 necessary to dig 20 feet before arriving at it' 



" Mr. Latrobe, governor of Victoria, describe* the Ballarat digging* 

 as carried on through 



" ' 1. Hed ferruginous earth and gravel 



" ' 2. Streaked yellowish and red clay. 



" ' 3. Quartx gravels of moderate size. 



" ' 4. Large quartz pebbles and boulders ; masse* of ironstone set 

 in very compact clay, hard to work. 



" ' 5. Blue and white clay. 



"'6. Pipe-clay. 



" ' In some workings the pipe-clay may be reached at the depth of 

 10 or 12 feet, in others not at 30 and upwards.' 



" To enter farther into the details of the several diggings would be 

 alike tedious and useless. I must refer you for them to the two 

 Parliamentary Reports published, the one in February and the other 

 in June, and to the many small publications with which the shop* are 

 now swarming. 



" My object to-night has been to give you such a rough sketch of 

 the geology of Australia, and of the geological facts and prinriplr* 

 that ought to guide any one in his search after gold, as may be of nao 

 to those intending to emigrate there. 



" In conclusion, I may perhaps be allowed to utter one word of 

 advice. 



" Gold-digging is very hard work just such work as you see navi- 

 gators at in railway cutting, or brick-makers in a brick-pit. You 

 mu-t work hard all day, lie hard all night, with but little shelter, 

 often with scanty food, and with nothing of what you have probably 

 been accustomed to consider necessary comfort. If you find you have 

 no luck at the diggings, or if your health, or strength, or resolution 

 fail you, do not therefore give up or despond altogether. You go out 

 to dig for gold ; do not be ashamed to dig for anything else. I speak 

 to those now who have been hitherto unaccustomed to manual labour. 

 Recollect, it is the avowed object of your voyage, and the only thing 

 you have to trust to. If you fail to dig up gold there are lands to be 

 ploughed, sheep to be herded and sheared, cattle to be tended, corn 

 to be sown and reaped every one of these fully as honourable occu- 

 pations as digging for gold. Go, then, with a bold and resolute heart, 

 determined to get your living by the strength of your owu anns and 

 the sweat of your own brows ; and be assured, that industry mid 

 perseverance lead to fortune in Australia with fewer impediment* 

 and uncertainties in the way than in any p.u-t of the world." 



Since the above was written, other districts in Australia have yielded 

 the precious metal, and every day is adding to our knowledge of the 

 wide extension of this metal on the surface of the earth. A few 

 months ago it was announced that gold had been discovered at 

 the Cape of Good Hope ; and at the beginning of the present year 

 the late Dr. Stanger delivered a lecture at Natal, in which he pointed 

 out the probability of gold being found in the neighbourhood of that 

 colony. For an account of the Salts of Gold, and its applications in 

 the arts and sciences, see GOLD, in ARTS AND Sc. Div. 



(Lectures on (fold delivered at the Muteum of Practical Geology; 

 DMIU. Mniiiiiil of Mineralogy.) 



GOLD-CAKP. [CvrniNiD*.] 



GOLDFINCH. fCARDUEua.] 



GOLDF1NNY. [CREMI.AI>.M;S.] 



GOLD-FISH. [CYPRINIDJE.] 



GOLD OF PLEASURE. [CAMELINA.] 



GOLDSINNY. [CRESII-ABRUS.] 



QOLT, or GAULT, an argillaceous deposit, separating the upper 

 greensand (also called firestone, malm-rock, &c.) from the lower green- 

 Hand (al.to called Woburn sand, iron-sand, Ac.). In Kent, Sussex, 

 Surrey, the Isle of Wight, Wiltshire, and Cambridgeshire its geological 

 situation and organic contents may be well studied. The clay of 

 Spec ton, on the Yorkshire coast, unites the characters of Golt and 

 Kimmeridge Clay. [('IIAI.K FORMATION.] 



ci >M i'ln >I,1TK, a name given by M. Brongniart to conglomerate 

 rocks of the Tertiary series, which in Switzerland are called 

 Niigelflue. 



OOMI'ltOMlMA. [DlATOMACE*.] 



GONGYLOPHIS. [BoiD*.] 



GONIAT1TES, an extinct group of fossil shells, belonging to tho 

 division of Cepbalopodous Mollutca. The species which it contains 

 are usually nrrnnged, by writers on organic remains, as a section of 

 Ammonites; but their appropriate characters were never completely 

 given till M. Von Bitch, following Haan of Lcyden, publish' 

 ' General Essay on the Sutures of Ammonites ' (read to the Academy 

 of .Sciences at Berlin in April, 1830; translated in the ' Annales dea 

 Sciences Naturelles,' 1833). 



The families or genera of frniiti/i and Ammonites are seldom well 

 understood by the conchological student, because the real distinctions 

 between them are not the meat apparent The most constant of all 

 the characters of Ammonites is the situation of the ipli"ii, which, 

 instead of perforating the disc of the transverse internal plates as in 

 NautUiu, touches and lien parallel to the inner face of the shell on the 

 dorsal line. There in another obvious and generally complete dis- 

 tinction in the form of the sutures, or intersections of the transverse 



