ANNIVEESAEY ADDRESS. 25 



the direction of the 149th meridian (which in the year 1851 I 

 pointed out to the Government as deserving of search), inter- 

 ferences with what has been held by some distinguished geologists 

 as the normal condition of gold veins may be detected, in which 

 some of the ordinary trappeau rocks exhibit a wonderful decom- 

 j)osition, and in the detritus of which halloysite, chert, resinite, 

 and chalcedony, and other minerals which probably point to 

 springs, occur as veins, though not to the exclusion in the neigh- 

 bourhood of more ordinary quartz reefs. In all the instances 

 named, mispickel, marcasite, or common pyrites, sometimes galena 

 and indications of copper ore, are present, and in many cases the 

 gold is held in the sulphides of iron. This is especially the case 

 with the granites, one variety of which on Cox's Eiver is often 

 sprinkled with galena. 



Persons are often confused when they see auriferous stone 

 suddenly, as it were, losing the gold and becoming charged with 

 the sulphides of iron. But it is a fact, established by close 

 observation, that where these sulphides abound, the gold generally 

 becomes invisible. That, however, is no sign of its actual dis- 

 appearance. Nevertheless, the experience of miners in other 

 countries shows plainly that an excess of pyrites is as unfavourable 

 to the presence of gold as the absence of it ; and " wlien either is 

 too much in excess, the auriferous 'projperty of tlie lode is impover- 

 ished." [Treloar. Eeports of St. John d'el Eey Company.] 



"When twenty-one years ago I announced the fact that invisible 

 gold was oftentimes held in quartz, the late Mr. Stutchbury 

 appended a note to one of his reports, calling the fact in question 

 as incomprehensible to him. But it is now almost universally 

 acknowledged as a fact. 



Similarly, persons may doubt the truth of the above statement 

 relating to the sulphides ; yet, on looking through the work on 

 Brazil, to which I have made so many previous references, I find 

 Mr. Hartt stating the same fact in relation to auriferous quartz 

 in Minas Geraes, Brazil. Where the vein rock is rich in sulphides, 

 the gold is, as a rule, not visible, but intimately mixed with the 



