4 30 Obituary— Richard Daintree, CM. G., F. G. S. 



was prefaced with the following official remarks : " The following 

 interesting Report .... contains so much matter having an im- 

 mediate reference to the economic development of the Colony, inter- 

 woven with purely scientific observations, that it has been deemed 

 desirable to jDublish it in extenso, without waiting to produce it ia 

 connexion with a series of similar reports or memoirs," etc. 



Some of the less known parts of Victoria were explored by 

 Messrs. Selwyn and Daintree in company, and on one of these trips 

 a tour of the gold-fields was made, and many most interesting 

 photographs illustrative of gold-field geology were taken. 



In 1864 Daintree resigned his connexion with the Victorian Civil 

 Service, and entered into pastoral pursuits on the Eiver Clarke, 

 Burdekin Eiver, North Queensland ; but during one of the several trips 

 made by him about that time between Melbourne and the northern 

 colony, he found time to make a partial examination of the N. S. 

 Wales Coal-field. The results of his observations ^ are important, 

 because they tended in a great measure to support the views held 

 by the late Eev. W. B. Clarke on the age and position of the Coal- 

 measures of N. S. Wales. Notwithstanding the danger and hardships 

 of a "squatting" life in lat. 19" S., Mr. Daintree's geological studies 

 were not neglected, for several useful examinations of his own district 

 were made. In 1866 a paper was read by him before the Eoyal 

 Society of N. S. Wales, to the effect that auriferous tracts would be 

 found in the neighbourhood of the Endeavour Eiver, a statement 

 which was borne out eight years later by the discovery of the Palmer 

 Gold-field. 



The full report,^ previously referred to, bearing on the work done 

 by Daintree and Wilkinson in the Ballan district of Victoria, was 

 not published in detail until 1866, when it appeared as one of the 

 regular reports of the Survey. In this report Daintree discussed 

 at some length the various modes of occurrence of gold, and in 

 reference to the origin of the precious metal, he said : " I had long 

 ago come to the conclusion, that most, if not all, the gold in the 

 quartz reefs was derived from the rocks in which these reefs occur. 

 That the strata themselves received their sujjply of gold at the 

 period of their deposition from the ocean in which they were de- 

 posited. That organic matter, and the gases generated therefrom 

 on decomposition, sulphuretted hydrogen, etc., was the cause of the 

 precipitation, and that the amount of metallic deposit was in pro- 

 portion to the amount of organic matter deposited with the oceanic 



1 On the Age of the N. S. "Wales Coal-beds. By R. Daintree. — The Geologist, 

 1864, vol. vii. pp. 72-79. 



2 Eeport on the Geology of the District of Ballan, including Eemarks on the Age 

 and Origin of Gold. By E. Daintree. Vict. Geol. Survey Eeport, 1866, No. 15, 

 pp. 11, folio. Melbourne. 



ilfflj3«.— Sheet 8 S.E. (Tarneit) ; 8 S.W. (Mount Mary); Sheet 12 S.E. (Balliang); 

 Sheet 19 NE. (Annakie HiUs) ; 19 S.E. (Station Peak): 20 N.W. (You-Yangs) ; 

 20 S.W. (Eothwell) ; Sheet 23 N.W. (Point Wilson, etc.) ; Sheet 24 S.E. (Geelong) ; 

 Sheet 28 N.E. (German Town) ; and Sheet 29 S.W. (Thompson's Creek). By E, 

 Daintree and C. S. Wilkinson, etc. 



