Anniversary Address, 11 



phere in less time than I have now been speaking, I must crave 

 your indulgence a little longer for a few other memoranda that I 

 have set down for noti ce. 



Since we last met, a new industry has commenced in our own 

 colony, which I hope will realise tho expectations of those who 

 are engaged in maturing it. 



In the year 1843, 1 obtained from the neighbourhood of the 

 Cudgegong Eiver a sample of native Mercury, which at the time 

 did not appear to have any great importance. It was at first 

 supposed, from the small amount, to have been derived from a 

 broken barometer; as a similar accident occurred to myself in 1851, 

 near the head of the Shoalhaven Eiver, and the loose globules 

 were found and reported by a subsequent visitor to the spot as 

 one of commercial promise. Moreover, in the paper on the ores 

 of Mercury, which I read before the Philosophical Society in the 

 year 1858,1 mentioned three other incidents, as on the Page Eiver, 

 on the Murray, and in Tasmania, occurring without any subsequent 

 discoveries. But after ten years from the last date, we have full 

 conviction that a rich ore of Mercury does exist in the neighbour- 

 hood of the first find of quicksilver ; and those who saw the mag- 

 nificent lump of ore exhibited by the Colonial Treasurer 

 last week, at the Agricultural Society's show — accompanied by 

 the quicksilver distilled from similar ore — must have felt that the 

 colony in its copper, lead, tin, bismuth, antimony, gold, and 

 mercury, promises to attain to the eminence of a rich mineral 

 country. 



In 1858, 1 was favoured by Colonel Gribbes with a statement 

 of the value of mercury imported into this colony for five year 8 

 up to the end of 1857, which was £3241. By a similar kindness 

 on the part of the present Collector, W. A. Duncan, Esq., I am 

 now enabled to mention, that from that year to the end of 1868, 

 the imports were valued at £20,519, of which there was an 

 export to the value of £10,515, or about half. The exports from 

 1853 to 1857, I do not know. But the average import for five 

 years was £649, and, deducting the export, for the second period 

 from 1858 to 1868 inclusive, the average retained import was 

 upwards of £900. So that whilst the consumption here was 

 increased half as much again, an export equal to that increase 

 has gone forth to the other colonies. As the present tendency 



