42 APPENDIX. 



Many times have pebbles of quartz — sucb as the one rendered 

 famous by the Townsend imposture — been forwarded, in the 

 hope that they would be pronounced diamonds ; but I am 

 persuaded, that, save in the Townsend case, there has been no 

 intention to deceive in that way, and that the senders were 

 merely under wrong impressions. A real digger has no object in 

 impostvu^e. Such cannot be said for the glass-griaders, who were 

 sometimes more transparent than the material they had manipu- 

 lated. 



So much for this episode. Let us now go back to the diamond, 

 and endeavour to ascertain some particulars relating to its history. 



On the Cudgegong there are five principal places where the 

 mineral is found. They occur at various depths from the sur- 

 face, greenstone in some instances having caused the formation 

 of unequal hollows for the collection of drift. The intrusive 

 rock follows the strike of the older rocks, which is about N. 



The older drift has been since covered by a basaltic flow, which 

 in turn has suffered from the denudation that has spread the 

 drift, so producing a younger drift, to which Mr. Norman Taylor 

 assigns the term Newer Pliocene in contrast with the older. 

 This designation is, no doubt, due to his Yictorian practice. 

 The basalt he compares with that of the Coliban Eiver in Victoria, 

 which from my own personal knowledge of that locality I can 

 confirm. 



The Carboniferous rocks have not furnished much detritus to 

 the older drifts ; but such occurs abundantly in the river bed. 

 A still more recent wash of drift occurs on the present surface. 



Mr. Taylor very properly presents to notice a difficulty which 

 has been hinted at already. 



If the diamonds were derived from the Carboniferous rocks, 

 why are they not found in the river bed, except where the tailings 

 of the miners have been washed in? From all the evidence 

 arrived at, the newer drift is derived from the older, and with 

 them is associated a cement of quartz and altered rock held by a 

 yellowish green silicate of iron and hydroxide of iron, from hand 

 specimens of which I have myself taken gold. Mr. Taylor says 

 it contains diamonds also. 



Many of the pebbles, which are of quartz and very hard flinty 

 altered rock, have long attracted my attention, on account 

 of the glaze or polish which they wear. They have exactly 

 the outward coating which distinguishes so many of the surface 

 pebbles found in the very heart of the interior of Australia, 

 ti'aversed by Sturt, M'Kinlay, and Burke and "Wills. What may 

 have been the way in which these pebbles have been polished is 

 not easy to be discovered. Iron sand, or, better still, perhaps gem 

 sand, in violent motion, may have been the agent, since we know 



