Ball — On the Gold-hearing Rocks of Southern India. 35 



that the reefs near the surface had not proved rich enough to work ; 

 so that hopes for the future depended on a hypothesis as to their 

 improvement to the deep, which had no real justification in fact. 

 Indeed, I might add to this that in some instances these operations 

 were, I believe, carried on where there was no true reef exposed at 

 the surface. 



I have carefully watched for consistent evidence of any of 

 the mines proving productive to a profitable extent. There is 

 no a priori reason against the capability of some of them be- 

 coming so ; but rather the contrary. Still shareholders of the 

 companies, with scarce an exception, are now complaining that 

 there are no results to justify the confidence which they have 

 shown in the hopes held out to them of returns at dates now 

 long past. 



I take this opportunity of referring to a large volume 

 which has recently been published. The author, when noticing 

 my writings on this subject, though commending my caution, 

 describes me as being a pessimist, and thereupon complacently 

 incorporates into his book, without the use of inverted commas, 

 nearly forty large pages of facts which I had most laboriously 

 collected for my chapter on Grold in the Economic Greology of 

 India. 



The term pessimist when thus used must be intended to indi- 

 cate a person who bases his opinion on well ascertained facts — and 

 on them alone — and who rejects, as unsuited to his purpose, the 

 high-flown and always sanguine views of writers whose language 

 sometimes keeps pace with their interests. Such, at least, was my 

 professed method ; and it may even prove that the opinion I 

 expressed, guarded as it was, was only too favourable. I certainly 

 believed that long ere this there would have been, in the cases of 

 some of the companies, more tangible results than I have yet been 

 able to hear of. 



Mr. Foote has ascertained that, traversing the granitic gneissose 

 rocks, which form the uplands of Mysore, there are several parallel 

 zones of schistose rocks in which all the principal known gold-bear- 

 ing localities are situated. Two of these zones are traceable for 

 several hundreds of miles, and their width is in one locality, at 

 least, eighteen miles. Although the nature of the relations 



D 2 



