40 APPENDIX. 



have been i]i some way derived from the carbon in the Cord 

 measures. Opinions as to the derivation of diamond from vegetable 

 matter bj a process of distillation, somewhat like that to which 

 coal is due, and even from animal matter capable of supplying 

 carbon, have been long held by certain philosophers. 



Considering the facts glanced at before,* relating to the trans- 

 mutation of rocks by heat and other agencies, the formation of 

 diamond in the humid way does not appear to me an extravagant 

 supposition. But, on examining the sand or deposit in which 

 the Cudgegong diamonds are found, I was struck with the amount 

 of minute gems, such as zircon, topaz, sapphire, corundum, spinel, 

 pleonaste, &c., which compose the finely sifted material in which 

 gold is also found ; and Mr. jS"orman Taylor dwells on the cir- 

 cumstance that the diamond is not only associated with the gold 

 (as in most other foreign localities), but -with those gems which 

 are held to have had an igneous origin, occurring as they do in 

 rocks which are so denominated ; and in some cases (I may add) 

 in true lava of modern volcanos. 



But before I go further into this question I must digress, in 

 order to explain that, though diamond is thus associated, on the 

 Cudgegong and on the Macquarie, as at Suttor's Bar, yet there 

 are in my knowledge hundreds of spots throughout the length 

 and breadth of Australia where the same gems are found in as 

 great abundance, often of much larger proportions, with or 

 without gold, and without a trace of the existence of diamond. 

 I have found them myself in this way in a variety of places in 

 this and the neighbouring Colonies, in an area which I do not 

 exaggerate, when I call it a hundred thousand square miles ; and 

 within the last year I have received thousands of such gems 

 from correspondents and visitors who have consulted me, without 

 finding among them more than a few diamonds, and but ten 

 independent of the present produce from Two-mile Elat and 

 Suttor's Bar. 



Those ten were found not far from Bingera, and are the first- 

 fruits of a new locality. They were accompanied by zircon, 

 larger than any found with diamonds on the Cudgegong, but also 

 with very small crystallizations of the same mineral and quartz. 

 The friend to whom I am indebted for the examination of these 

 diamonds is encoiu-aging a search for more. I may add, that I 

 have seen no diamond from Cudgegong exactly resembling those 

 from Bingera. 



I have received also two diamonds, said to be found near Kan- 

 galoon, on the Mittagong Eange ; but as many other minerals, 



* " On the Transmutation of Rocks in Australasia," by Eev. W. B. 

 Clarke, M.A. ; read before the Pliilosopliical Society of N.S.'W., 10th May, 

 1865 (T. P. S., p. 266). 



