On the Occurrence and Distribution of Gold in India. 525 
it is occasionally derived from rocks belonging to various forma- 
tions which range from Permian through tertiary periods up to 
recent alluvial deposits. To some of the facts under this last 
heading, which will be found in the following detailed accounts, 
I would invite particular attention, as they are of considerable 
interest when placed in comparison with similar facts in other 
gold-producing countries. 
Gold washing, as practised in India, affords an example, I 
believe, of human degradation. - The colonies of washers who are 
found plying their trade in most of the areas where, geologically 
speaking, the occurrence of gold is possible, must be regarded as 
the remnants of a people possessing special knowledge*; for 
although the former may have some acquaintance with the 
appearance of the rocks in the neighbourhood of which gold 
occurs, still, so far as I could ascertain from a close examination 
of the operations of two gold washers who were in my service for 
about three months, such acquaintance, if possessed, is rarely 
availed of. Indeed I doubt if they ever look upon the rocks as 
being really the source from whence the gold has been derived. 
They know of its occurrence in the sands and alluvial soils, but 
whence it ultimately came from they do not trouble to consider. 
But it cannot always have been so, for their earliest progenitors 
must have ascertained the existence of the gold by the applica- 
tion of experimental research in localities where, from theoretical 
considerations, they believed it to exist. 
It is scarcely possible that the non-gold-producing areas in 
which the Dekan trap or basalt and the rocks of the Vindhyan 
formation prevail, and which aggregate a total area of about 
one-fourth of the peninsula, were ever systematically prospected, 
and for this reason, if for no other, that the washers, if they were 
comparable to those of the present day, could not have devoted 
months and years to the exploration of, for them, barren tracts, 
simply from the fact that they could not subsist under such cir- 
cumstances. 
By what means, soever, they were led to select and settle in 
* JT have often been struck with the traditional knowledge of such subjects as A/ateria 
medica possessed by individuals of semi-savage tribes who never seem to discover a new 
idea for themselves, nor to modify in the slightest degree, when uninfluenced by superior 
races, their methods of performing any one single act in their domestic economy. 
