306 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [March 8, 



by the Commissioner of PoUce of South Austraha at Mount Re- 

 markable, and consumed under a blowpipe by a gentleman who 

 understood its power better than its proper use. The Commissioner 

 informed me of it one day too late ! 



Opals with slight play of colours have been shown to me in South 

 Australia ; but they were very remote in brilliancy from the Noble 

 Opal of Hungary or South America. 



Gold Crystals. 



Gold is found in the colony of Victoria, under the most interest- 

 ing forms of crystallization ; and it may be inferred from the fact of 

 my having collected so many splendid specimens, unassisted by the 

 researches of others, that still finer specimens will hereafter be ex- 

 hibited. There are also perceptible differences in the character, — as 

 to form, colour, and quality, — of the gold, as found at the various 

 gold-fields. 



In purity, i.e. in reference to the standard, the gold of Ballarat *, 

 M'^Ivor, and the River Ovens, all in Victoria, is at the head of the 

 list ; whilst probably that of Louisa Creek, and some other localities 

 in New South Wales, is the lowest in the scale. 



The characteristic form of Ballarat gold is the " pepita " or 

 " nugget," often of gigantic size, one having reached the enormous 

 weight of 130 lbs. On the other hand, the gold of the River Ovens 

 is invariably iu very fine scales and dust. At Mount Alexander, 

 "black" gold is often met with, being gold coated with a black sub- 

 stance, which resists all the acids, and cannot be acted upon by the 

 magnet, or removed from the gold with a knife. 



M'^Ivor River has furnished fine specimens of groups of gold- 

 crystals, as also a peculiar kind of dendritic gold, which, from its 

 similarity to moss-copper, I have termed "moss-gold." (Specimens 

 U. and V. ; the latter was found at Mount Alexander.) 



Gold is also found in New South Wales Diggings (imiversally, I 

 believe) and at Mount Alexander, enclosed in, and sometimes 

 enclosing, quartz ; never in granite that I have heai'd of, but often 

 in iron-stone. (See specimen No. 1 .) 



N. A conglomerate of chlorite, quartz, iron-stone, steatite, &c., 

 bound together by oxide of iron, having gold distributed through the 

 mass. It was broken out of a vein of similar substances, about a 

 foot wide, forming a so-called "gold-lode," between walls of nearly 

 perpendicular quartzose rock, at a depth of 90 feet, in my presence, 

 at Specimen Hill, Mount Alexander, which was a low hill not far 

 from the summit of the latter. The party digging there had a 

 crushing machine, and found the yield of gold very satisfactory. 



O. Gold from the River Ovens. 



P. Gold in red ferruginous earth, found at the INIontacute or 

 "Victoria Gold Mine," in South Australia, about twelve miles from 

 Adelaide, on a tributary of the River Torrens, in 1845. 



* For a notice of tlie Ballarat Gold Field, see ilr. Wathcn's Paper, Quart. 

 Journ. Geol.Soc. vol. xi. p. 75. 



