6 Anniversary Address. 



There are exceptions, however, even in Victoria, for the reefs 

 of Wood's Point, in the Australian Alps, run through diorite. 



In the northern division of Queensland, as on the Cape River 

 some of the gold occurs as threads traversing the quartz, which 

 are difficult to be separated. In fact, nothing is more 

 variable than the occurrence of gold in matrix ; as may be seen 

 by comparing it from those places just mentioned with one of 

 the gold rocks of the north-east of New Zealand, where Silica 

 and Gold almost equal in quantity occur in a mixed solid mass- 

 Mr. Hacket in his Report of 15th April last, states that at 

 Gyrnpie, gold sometimes occurs there in threads and wires as 

 cementing quartz. 



In my short paper on the Mary Eiver, I stated that the gold 

 was in patches. This is confirmed by Mr. Aplin, who, in a letter 

 dated 8th April, states that the fields he had then visited, viz., 

 Jimna, Gooroomjam, Talgai, and even Gympie, are " very patchy 

 and limited in extent. Still they each possess characters differ- 

 ing from each other and from the most of them in Victoria, and 

 are certainly interesting in a scientific sense. It really seem a 

 to be the case here that slate and sandstone country, with quartz 

 veins, is not the auriferous portion of a gold-field. At Gympie 

 there are fine looking quartz reefs among the slates, but all the 

 auriferous ones are confined to that portion of the gold-field 

 which is occupied by Diorite." " The alluvial is on the boun- 

 dary of gi'anite and slate rocks. At Gooroomjam there is is no 

 quartz even in the alluvial, and one quartz vein, two or three 

 inches wide, in diorite, but without gold. The gold here has evi- 

 dently been derived from the greenstone, as, with the exception 

 of numerous nodules of haematite, the whole of the drift material 

 consists of greenstone fragments. At Talgai also the reefs are 

 east and west. Not a meridional one out of the twelve that have 

 been opened. Most of them are in a hard cherty rock, without 

 cleavage or lamination, and the bedding very obscure. One or 

 two of them are in a hard siliceous sandstone, but they can 

 hardly be called reefs, and are really nothing more than an 

 assemblage of strings of quartz with sandstone partings." 



These results of Mr. Aplin's researches are valuable to our- 

 selves. Thev indicate also the truth of a doctrine I have endea- 



