GOLD. 319 



by 4 or 5 broad, and about an inch thick. In Paraguay, 

 pieces from 1 to 50 pounds weight were taken from a mass 

 of rock which fell from one of the highest mountains. Sev- 

 eral specimens weighing 16 pounds have been found in the 

 Ural, and one of 27 pounds : and in the valley of Taschku- 

 Targanka, in 1842, a mass was detached weighing very 

 nearly 100 pounds troy. This mass is now in the museum 

 of the Institute of Mining Engineers at St. Petersburg. 



The largest mass yet discovered in any part of the world, 

 is one from California, weighing 134 pounds 7 ounces, and 

 affording 109 pounds 11 ounces of pure gold: it sold for 

 £5.532. Another of 27J pounds, here figured, 



was found at Forest Creek, Mount Alexander, in the colony 

 of Victoria. It was 11 inches long and 5 in breadth at its 

 broadest part. 



The origin of gold veins, or rather of the gold in the 

 veins, is little understood. The rocks, as has been stated, 

 are metamorphic slates that have been crystallized by heat ; 

 and they are the talcose and argillaceous, that have been 

 but imperfectly crystallized, rather than the mica schist and 

 gneiss which are well crystallized : and the veins of quartz 

 which contain the gold, occupy fissures through the slates, 

 and openings among the layers, which must have been made 

 when the metamorphic change or crystallization took place. 

 It was a period, for each gold region, of long continued heat, 

 (occupying, probably, a prolonged age,) and also of vast up- 



What is said of the gold rock of the United States ? 



