4 
280 Scientific Intelligence. 
tralia, nearly parallel to the coast line, and from fifty to eighty miles 
from t orming part of the main chain of the continent, 
rising at its highest summit, Mount Kosciusko, to 6500 feet above the 
sea-level. This mountain chain in Victoria consists of clay-slates, 
mica-slates, and flinty slates, in successive steps, forming collectively, 
a recurring series, ; 
The slates are nearly or quite vertical, with a north and south strike, 
and are intersected by numerous quartz-veins, running at an acute 
angle with the slates. Vast plains of trap, forming high table-lands, 
run up to the base of the mountains and tobably cover their lower 
deposits of gold are found. The auriferous districts are commonly 
en by deep valleys and precipitous steeps. The hills are thickly 
forested ; the soil poor and gravelly, and the surface strewn with angu- 
Jar fragments of white quartz. 
ravines. These valleys are known by the names of the streams of 
“creeks” that run through them. One of these, Forest Creek, — 
approaches the higher granite country, where it originates. On 
banks of the River Loddon gold is found in small quantities, lodged 
the crevices of the rocks, but no large deposits have been met with : 
the river, and even the stream into which Forest Creek ee . 
i n 
never washed down to the large streams. Auriferous sands on 1 
banks or in alluvial plains’are unknown in the Colony. When w! 
12 inches of the surface, the is disseminated in a q 
thin 
