AUSTRALASIA, NEW GUINEA, AND NEW ZEALAND 769 



West Australia are found in the great area of pre-Cambrian rocks 

 there developed, and, moreover, that they occur in belts arranged 

 more or less parallel and relatively narrow in width, although in 

 certain localities they appear as small isolated areas or patches; 

 that these narrow and well-defined belts have a general northwest 

 and southeast direction, with divergences in certain instances of 

 several degrees on either side of this direction; that the ore deposits 

 in these belts or zones, owing to certain activities, do not crop out 

 in long and unbroken lines, but are cut up into relatively short 

 lenticles, arranged en echelon. 



Table I gives the approximate values of the several metals mined 

 in these countries. 



TABLE I 



Approximate Totax Values, in Millions of Pounds Sterling, of the More 

 Important Metals Mined in Australasia and New Zealand 



The general direction of these auriferous belts almost everywhere coincides 

 with the strikes of the schists, which, with one or two exceptions, invariably 



form the matrices of the gold-bearing reefs The quartz reefs are of two 



distinct types, namely, white quartz reefs and laminated quartz and jasper 

 veins approaching very closely the haematite-bearing quartzites which invari- 

 ably form a conspicuous feature in most of the gold fields of the State. Some 

 of the laminated quartz veins range from almost-pure quartz, through banded 

 jaspers, with crystals of magnetite, to bands appearing to the eye to be vir- 

 tually pure haematite. The quartz reefs, of what may be called the massive 

 types, occur plentifully in both the schists and the granites. 1 



Like the gold deposits of Western Australia those of the North- 

 ern Territory and of South Australia appear to be pre-Cambrian 



1 A. Gibb Maitland, "Mining Fields of Australia" (Federal Handbook), Brit. 

 Assoc. Adv. ScL, Australian meeting, 1014, pp. 447-48. 



