26 On the Geological Distribution of Gold. 



In Victoria, Australia, we also find that a difference exists, 

 with regard to the quality of gold from the veinstone and 

 that from the fluvial depositions. From assays made of 

 gold from dunes, distinguished for its auriferous quartz veins, 

 the following is the fineness of its gold, according to the 

 assays made hy William Birkmyre, Esq., and kindly com- 

 municated by him to the writer : — " The gold from the quartz 

 reefs at Clunes varies in quality from 23. 04-8 to 23. 1. 4-8 

 carats." 



"The alluvial gold, assays 23. 2. 4-8 carats." 



Consequently there is a difference showing a higher quality 

 of the fluvial gold of one-fourth to one-half of a carat. 



Bendigo district, according to assays made at the assay- 

 office of Messrs. Clarke and Sons, in Melbourne : — 

 Fluvial gold - - 22-3 6-8 to 23 2-8 carats 



Gold from the veinstone 21-2 7-8 

 Fluvial gold from Epsom 23-2 

 Ditto Gipps Land 20-3 2-8 



Gold from the veinstone has been found as low as from 15 

 to 18 carats, the lowest fluvial gold being 20 carats. This 

 shows a considerable difference in the higher quality of flu- 

 vial and lower quality of vein-gold of Victoria. 



FLUVIAL GOLD. 



The geological date of the fluvial depositions, among which 

 gold makes its appearance, may reasonably be looked for at 

 that period of the tertiary era when in England varieties of 

 terrestrial mammalia (as the horse, dog, pig, the deer, the 

 woolly elephant, and others) were destroyed, and consequently 

 entombed under deep layers of sand, gravel, and clay ; these 

 strata being now designated as " mammaliferous crag." 

 These changes were not very distant from the time when those 

 extensive longitudinal narrow accumulations of sand and small 

 pebbles were piled up by mighty currents, as seen in Ireland 

 in "the Escars," and in Sweden, as the " A°sar;" and at the 

 period when caverns, in different parts of the world, were 

 for the last time visited by their occupants — who all, in the 

 hour of horror and conflict, terrified by fear, were by a natural 

 impulsive instinct driven to their supposed refuge. In those 

 awful moments of overwhelming destruction, we may imagine 

 how the powerful and the weak, the ferocious hycena and the 

 timid deer, met to suffer together. About this period, when 

 destruction seems to have prevailed in all quarters of the globe, 



