22 ANFIVEESABT ADDRESS. 



covering, at least 100 feet thick, wliicli concealed the auriferous 

 deposits overlying granite. At Ophir, where quartziferous soft 

 slates are overlain by basalt, of about the same thickness, these 

 enterprising men had driven into the soft slate, and had then 

 mined upwrn^ds from the drive to the bottom of the basalt, 

 between which and the top of the slate they had found drift and 

 sand and pebbly cement with gold, proving that in their case, at 

 least, mining was not an unintelligible guess-work. 



Such persons deserve encouragement, and it would gratify me 

 much if the mention of their undertaking could induce assistance 

 towards its completion. This is clearly a case in which alluvial 

 gold is itself procured by ingenuity in mining. 



The notion that available gold is only to be found in quartz - 

 veins running through the lower Silurian rocks must be abandoned. 



It was pretended, at one time, that the Californian rocks were 

 the clue to those rocks in New South "Wales that led to the 

 opening up of the first worked gold field at this very Ophir. 

 That field is, at any rate, in a Palaeozoic area. And yet we have 

 the published ofilcial statement of the State Greologist of Cali- 

 fornia, Mr. Whitney, that not a single fossil of Middle or Lower 

 Palaeozoic age has ever been discovered in California, or anywhere 

 west of the 116th meridian ; proving that any true geological com- 

 parison of the two regions must have resulted, at the time, in 

 disappointment. Again it is doubted by those who have the best 

 right to doubt, whether any Silurian deposits exist in Queensland. 

 The gold of Eavenswood, for instance, and Charter's Towers 

 also, is all from granite, or deposits of brown ironstone — not only 

 from quartz in the former, but also from solid granite. The rich 

 gold field of Grympie appears to be not older than the Carboni- 

 ferous formation. In New Zealand the wonderfully rich finds on 

 the Thames occurred in rocks not older than the Trias ; whilst in 

 California a large portion of the auriferous rocks are as recent as 

 Trias and Jurassic, and no inconsiderable portion is as recent as 

 transmuted Cretaceous rocks. The great secret is there, as at 

 Grympie, in transmutation. 



