288 



These communications and obsei-vations all tend to show an almost perfect 

 similarity of the country to that part of the Province of Nelson which lies 

 between Motueka Gorge on the south, and D'Urville's Island on the north, the 

 centre of which may be said to be the Dun Mountain. 



Dr. Hector writes me as follows : — " I have just received a series of speci- 

 mens of the gold-bearing rocks at Gympie, from Mr. Hackett, Queensland, 

 and from their characters I have no doubt of their similaiity to the Wairoa 

 Gorge rocks and to some extent also to those at the Thames diggings. They 

 have all the appea7:-ance of being true greenstones, and yet contain Spirigera, 

 Monotis, and other Trias fossils ; they are charged with pyrites, and cut by 

 quartz reefs ; and many of the specimens cannot be distinguished from those 

 sent by Captain Hutton from the Thames. One specimen contains graphite 

 markings, and resembles closely the plant-beds from Wakapuaka." 



Mr. Hackett remarks on the similarity of the Dun Mountain country to 

 that of the Rockhampton gold-mining district, as containing chrome ore, 

 serpentine, gabro, schiller spar, copper ore, and iron ore ; and in a previous 

 letter, dated " Gympie," he writes : — " The new reef at Killiven, the place I 

 wrote you of as being similar to the Dun Mountain, is turning out well, viz., 

 ten ounces to the ton, where nothing is visible to the naked eye ;" and he adds, 

 "the Dun Mountain people ought not to be discouraged." 



In Mr. Daintree's report, I wish to draw the attention of the members of 

 the Association to a new and remarkable feature in gold-mining, as presented 

 to us in that report, viz., the fact that it is no longer a necessity in searching 

 for gold that we should first discover either quartz veins or quartz reefs for a 

 matrix, and that it is now proved beyond a doubt that gold exists in rock 

 masses in Queensland, both of felspar and serpentine. 



Mr. Daintree, in his report, says : — "There are other matrices of gold, by 

 no means self-evident, which call for more careful consideration as likely to 

 yield most valuable results. These are — The auriferous serpentine rock of 

 JBlock's claim. Mount Wheeler, and the auriferous felspar of Cummins's reef. 

 In my report on the Cape River District, some twelve months since, I drew 

 attention to the fact that the gold of Paddies' and Shai-pers' Gullies had 

 evidently been derived from a decomposed felstone dyke and not from quartz 

 -veins, and suggested that some of the upper portions of our felspathic 'dykes' 

 might be remuneratively worked for gold. In the case of Cummins's reef, we 

 bave confirmatory evidence of this fact. This material, which has yielded, 

 continually, half an ounce to the ton, is simply a crystalline pyritous felspar 

 rock, about ten feet thick, bounded by greenstone walls, and whether considered 

 as a ' dyke,' or the segregation in a particular zone of one element only of the 

 boundary rock, adds to the conviction that we are at present entering on a 

 new field in the occurrence of gold, the importance of which cannot be over 

 estimated." "The auriferous serpentine," Mr. Daintree remarks, "of Block's 



