1854.] STEPHEN AUSTRALIAN GEMS AND GOLD. 303 



Loddon, this drift appears to attain a great thickness, forming an 

 almost level forest-country, extending for many miles, and quite con- 

 cealing the miderlying rocks. 



2. On the Gems and Gold-crystals of the Australian Colo- 

 nies. By G. MiLNER Stephen, Esq., Barrister, F.G.S., V.Pres. 



Geol. Soc. of Victoria. 



Until the discovery of the great gold deposits in Australia*, the 

 colonists considered no other mineral productions than copper and 

 lead deserving their research ; although specimens of native gold 

 were publicly exhibited (and seen by myself) in a jeweller's shop 

 in Sydney so far back as 1836, brought by a Bathurst shepherd 

 periodically from that locality ; and although in the sister colony of 

 South Australia a vein of red ferruginous earth, richly charged with 

 gold (specimen G.), had been found in a copper-mine near Adelaide 

 in the year 1845, six years before Mr. Hargreaves made his first 

 communication to the Sydney government. 



And yet the colonists (those of South Australia especially, who 

 were the earliest pioneers in the mining-field) could not be justly 

 taxed with apathy on the subject of their hidden treasures, inasmuch 

 as there was little inducement for them to make discoveries, whilst 

 they found ample employment for their limited capital and scanty 

 supply of labourers in their highly profitable agricultural and pas- 

 toral occupations. Indeed, in the colony of New South Wales, and 

 in Van Diemen's Land, its offspring, there was a motive directly 

 operating upon the mind of the landed proprietor (whose flocks and 

 herds roamed unmolested over tens of thousands of acres) to conceal, 

 if possible, the teeming wealth of the soil, as his title-deeds or land 

 grants expressly reserved to the Crown all gold and silver, &c. The 

 working of coal in New South Wales, moreover, was secured by the 

 Government as a monopoly for years to the Australian Agricultural 

 Company ! 



This obstacle to the advance of mineralogical science appears to 

 have escaped the attention of some of the numerous writers upon 

 Australia ; but for the honour of the Australian colonists, whose 

 spirit of enterprise is only second to that of the Americans, it should 

 not be lost sight of by any writer who enters upon the topic. 



As our countrymen at home, as well as the Australian colonists 

 themselves, are not very well informed as to the extent and variety of 

 the mineral productions of those interesting colonies, having to trust 

 much to rumour for their information, and to the doubtful authenti- 

 city of such specimens as may come under their notice in this country, 

 I have prepared a brief catalogue, showing the localities of such pre- 

 cious stones and chief metalliferous minerals as I have detected in 

 the course of several years' residence in four of those colonies. And 



"" For notices of the Gold-tielrls of Australia, see Quart. Jourii. Geol. Soc. vol. ix. 

 1>. 7 1 ; aiifl supra, p. 302. 



