AJTXIVERSAEY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xllll 



deposits have been regarded as beds in the calcareous series. But, 

 as the works run in lines, as the boundarj^, on one side at least, is 

 often a fault, and the vertical depth is often enormous, the analogy 

 to veins and dykes is not less obvious. I find, by a recent personal 

 survey, that the deposits often lie in hoUoTvs which have been exca- 

 vated in the limestone, that they often suddenly terminate against 

 a subterranean cliff of limestone, and colour the rock, but are never 

 really interstratified with it. Thus their age is certaiuly later than 

 that of the limestone, and later than that of the faults which there 

 divide the limestone. These faults are probably anterior to the 

 Permian system ; and, as some beds probably of the J^ew Eed deposits 

 lie, though rarely, over the iron-bands of West Cumberland, there 

 seems good reason to fix these haematitic iron-ores as a deposit of the 

 Permian age, transported in water free from coarse sediments, accu- 

 mulated in hollows of the calcareous sea-bed, in water of some con- 

 siderable depth, and at some considerable distance from coast- and 

 river-currents * . 



Gold-Jields of Australia ^ Vancouver'' s Island, Sfc. 



In every age and in every country the history of gold-working is 

 the same. Eivers with golden sand, alluvial sediments, the gift 

 of earlier streams, detrital accumulations gathered in hollows, not 

 far from the parent rocks and veins, yielded gold to the treasury of 

 Eome, as now similar deposits, washed in nearly similar modes, fill 

 the exchanges and manufactories of Europe f. Several interesting 

 memoirs on the Australian gold-fields have been communicated to the 

 Geological Society. The papers of Selwyn and Eosales and others 

 may be quoted as affording a remarkable proof of the scientific spirit 

 which now at least is present, if it can hardly be expected to prevail, 

 among the hardy adventurers in a new world of discovery, where 

 gold exists, in masses weighed not by pounds, but by hundreds of 

 pounds. Some of the points clearly estabh'shed by their researches 

 have been brought before us by Messrs. Phillips and Eosales, and 

 illustrated by maps and sections. To a map showing the actual 

 drainage in the gold- district of Ballaarat and Mount Alexander, there 

 has been added, by the progress of heavy toil and deep digging, 

 another older and deeper system (and perhaps more than one) of 

 auriferous drainage, having different stems and different branches. 



This old drainage, ramifying like any actual streams, and collect- 

 ing like them into main channels, takes a course towards and under 

 a great plateau of trap-rock, the fruit of volcanos which still are 

 represented by a few craters elevated in this region. 



And, below this basaltic plateau, Kes in places a bed of dark car- 

 bonaceous clay, containiug remains of plants like those now living 

 in the country, and Kving in no other continent, especially of the 



* Prof. Phillips and Mr. Barker on Iron-ores of West Cumberland and N. 

 Lancashire, in Brit. Assoc. Report, 1858. 



t The Rhine sediments still yield gold, mostly in thin scales, lying among 

 quartzite and other pebbles, often under but not in the loess. Its probable 

 origin is in the quartzites, traps, and schists of the Alps and other ranges 

 yielding water to the Rhine. (Daubree, ' Constitution du Bas-Rliin.' 1852.) 



d2 



