308 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [March 8, 



have been water-borne by a stream of water, sufficiently powerful to 

 move such a heavy substance, in a water-course which has long been 

 obliterated by a deposit of from 15 to 25 feet of superincumbent 

 soil and detritus, from the bottom of which these specimens were ex- 

 tracted by the gold-digger, in a situation covered with large timber 

 and in the midst of undulating hills, miles away from any present 

 body of water. 



7. A third group of gold-crystals from the same locality ; in 

 which ironstone and opake quartz are imbedded. 



8. A singular crystal of gold, presenting the appearance of an 

 elongated octahedron ; but Mr. Brooke considers it to be a Macle- 

 Crystaly consisting of two octahedrons, so united, that two of their 

 faces respectively present two elongated planes : from Ballarat. 



9. Gold in opake quartz, from Ophir, New South Wales. Its 

 light straw colour, like the generality, if not all, of the native gold 

 of that colony, shows it to be much alloyed with silver. 



10 to 13. Are four curious instances of ramose, crystallized, and 

 eccentric forms of native gold, from M'^Ivor River, Victoria. 



3. On the Gold Regions of California, 

 By Mr. James S. Wilson. 



[Communicated by Sir R. I. Murchison, F.G.S.] 



Having explored, during a residence of nearly three years, some of 

 the richest auriferous tracts of California, I have been requested by 

 Sir R. I. Murchison, to present through him to the Geological 

 Society of London an outline of my personal observations. 



Sonora Diggings. — The neighbourhood of Sonora was the place 

 selected for the first operations of my associates and myself in gold- 

 digging. Several kinds of rock presented themselves, identical with 

 what I had seen in the mineral districts of South Austraha; the pre- 

 vailing rocks, and that on the surface of which the gold was deposited, 

 were slates and gneiss. 



Sidivan's Creek Diggings. — We commenced working at a place 

 called Suhvan's Creek, about two miles south from Sonora. The 

 diggings at this place were considered to be among the richest in the 

 southern mines ; but the greater part of the gold found there was 

 supposed (and with great probability) to have been swept down by 

 floods from Sulivan's Gulch, which is a ravine, rich in gold, about 

 one mile in length, following the strike of the rocks, and having the 

 gneiss on one side and a white crystalline limestone on the other. 



The rock, however, which had originally contained and yielded 

 the gold, was the gneiss, as a vein of auriferous quartz is traceable in 

 it, running along the top of the hill parallel with the ravine. Gold 

 was likewise found in the debris on the gneiss, as well as in the bed 

 of the ravine ; but none on the limestone. These rocks are all 



