Anniversary Address. 7 



voured to enforce, that those who look for gold according to the 

 hypothesis that it can only be fonnd imder one set of conditions, 

 are not always likely to succeed. " Quartz veins in slates " is 

 the stereotyped notion of thousands, without even considering 

 that slates may be of various geological epochs, and California 

 was once quoted as justifying a search for gold in this colony, 

 though the age of the gold rocks in the former country is very 

 far distant from, and very much more recent than that of the 

 latter. Mr. Hacket has recently furnished me with a valuable 

 map of the reef at Gynipie. These occur in dioritic schists, and 

 not in lines uninterruptedly, but in steps, as if occasioned by 

 faults. Some run E. and "W., others S. and S."W\ 



In Southern Queensland, and even so far north as the East 

 Burdekin country, the surface is strewn with loose fossils of Car- 

 boniferous and Devonian age, and it is not unlikely the matrix of 

 some of the gold was in part originally of the same epochs. Such, 

 too, is the actual view of Mr. Daintree respecting certain areas 

 in Northern Queensland. 



I have ascertained, by examination, that sulphide of lead 

 (Galena) exists in Queensland under circumstances that make 

 it an indication of gold: just as in parts of Victoria the 

 auriferous veins are often charged with Galena. On comparing the 

 examples, I see a great resemblance. In one place in the latter 

 colony, the gold is attached in crystalline particles to the lead 

 ore, but without combination with the contained silver. - Re- 

 cently some very fine lead has been produced from a rich ore at 

 "Woolgarlo, near Tass, the age of which cannot be older than the 

 base of our Carboniferous rocks, as in a direction not far off the 

 lead veins are charged with fossils of that age— a curious fact 

 analogous with the existence of casts of Silurian fossils in the 

 copper lodes of Bombala. 



A report from Mr. Daintree has only reached my hands a 

 week ago. It is a most valuable document, and is accompanied 

 by an admirable map. Erom it I learn that the anomaly of the 

 Tulgai gold lodes running east and west is not exactly the case 

 in the Cape River district. Mr. Daintree considers them to have 

 there a general trend along the meridian ; but he distinctly shows 

 that they are accompanied by felspathic elvans, to which he attri- 



