GEOLOGY OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC Ig 
pebbles, he says that after searching a great number of thin sec- 
tions he has found moss-gold in one or two; and moreover that 
after grinding up the rock and treating it with agua regia to dis- 
solve the free gold, the quartz fragments often showed included 
gold that had not been removed. He says, moreover, that 
Schmeisser answers this question in the affirmative. 
This is not, however, a fair statement of the latter’s opinion, 
which in his own words is as follows: ‘The gold occurs almost 
entirely in the cement or matrix, in rare cases also in the pebbles. 
In the latter cases, however, it appears to be found only in the 
minute cracks that traverse the quartz.” Koch, from whose 
observations he formed his opinion, considers, as shown above, 
the gold in such cracks to be the secondary, as well as the quartz 
which encloses it. His (Schmeisser’s) final words with regard 
to whether the gold was deposited with the conglomerate as 
‘fossil placer deposits,’ or was brought in subsequently in solu- 
tion, are: ‘The observed phenomena bear evidence in part for 
the one, in part for the other solution.” 
Hatch, while declining to discuss the various hypotheses that 
have been brought forward, says, that the quartz pebbles are 
derived from veins in the Primary formation, but they are not 
the source of the gold because it does not occur in them (the 
pebbles); that the movements produced faulting ; that the dikes 
followed the fault fissures; and that the same planes acted as 
channels for the introduction of ascending mineralizing solu- 
tions. He says that no evidence has been found in favor of 
the locally prevalent theory that the dikes have acted beneficially, 
as regards gold contents, on reefs in their immediate neighbor- 
hood. : 
The Future of the Rand.—So much attention has evidently been 
given to the question of the origin of the gold not only because 
of its intrinsic interest, but because it has an important bearing 
upon the future productiveness of the region. 
The grounds on which auriferous conzlomerates outcrop have, 
it may be assumed, been all taken up or “pegged out,” as 
the South African phrase is; and already many so-called deep 
