418 I'ransactions. — Geology. 



Art. LXXII. — Notes on the Mineralogy of New Zealand. 

 By S. Herbert Cox, F.C.S., F.G.S., Assistant Geologist. 



[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, llth Beptemher, Wth October, and 



nth November, 1881.] 



The work of the Geological Survey naturally divides itself under various 

 heads, to each of which one officer or other of the department devotes 

 special attention, and it has fallen to my lot, while pursuing the general 

 routine work of the survey, to he more especially connected with the minera- 

 logical and mining branches than with any other. 



This being so. Dr. Hector has suggested that it would be of interest to 

 bring before the Society in a connected form the details which have been 

 collected from time to time concerning the minerals hitherto discovered in 

 New Zealand, and I propose to make the present paper the first of a series 

 describing the New Zealand minerals, with such points of interest concern- 

 ing them as suggest themselves to me, and I hope that where members 

 have information of minerals existing in localities which I do not cite, 

 they will be good enough to furnish the Society with notes of the same, 

 as any description of this sort should be as complete as it is possible to 

 make it. 



Up to the present time the accounts of the minerals found in New Zea- 

 land have been somewhat fragmentary. In 18G5, Dr. Hector published a 

 list of the minerals found in the province of Otago, together with a descrip- 

 tion of the same in the " Jurors' Eeports of the New Zealand Exhibition," 

 1805; and this description was very complete when it is considered that at 

 that time the Geological Survey of New Zealand had hardly commenced. 

 Since that time Professor Hutton has published a list of Otago minerals in 

 his report on the geology of Otago, which does not include all the specimens 

 mentioned by Dr. Hector. Professor Liversidge has also (Trans. N.Z. Inst., 

 vol. X., p. 490) described a selection of minerals forwarded to him, and 

 Professor v. Haast has mentioned some of the economic minerals found in 

 Canterbury in his work on the geology of Canterbury and Westland, besides 

 which the Colonial Museum and Laboratory Eeports and the Geological 

 Survey Eeports contain mention from time to time of minerals forwarded 

 for identification or collected by the Survey, but none of these are complete 

 in themselves, so that I think there is sufficient reason for a work of this 

 sort. 



The system of classification which I propose to pursue is the one adopted 

 by Professor Warrington Smyth, of the Eoyal School of Mines, London, 



