12 Anniversary Address 



of gold production is in the direction of reef gold, there will, of 

 necessity, be an increased demand. 



I am glad, therefore, to say, on the best authority, that since 

 the commencement of the search for Cinnabar, the Cudgegong 

 mine has sent to the company working it a considerable amount 

 of ore, and that from the ore different trials, by Mr. Watt, have 

 produced from 30 to 50 per cent, of quicksilver, though that 

 may be taken as excessive on the average of the lode. 



As in other countries, so at Cudgegong, the geological age of 

 the formation appears to be Silurian in the neighbourhood of 

 overlying Carboniferous deposits. I may refer inquirers for the 

 evidence as to the age of the quicksilver rocks of Spain to 

 the paper read by me, already named. 



There is one other product of which I would wish to say a 

 word or two. The display of mineral oils from the cannel of 

 Mount York and the coal shales of Mount Kembla, made at the 

 Exhibition last week, was sufficiently encouraging to recompense 

 any public disappointment at present experienced in other 

 localities. So far, however, from discouragement arising from 

 the fact that the peculiar condition of the coal seams is limited, 

 in every case, to a comparatively small area, caused by the con- 

 centration of the volatile ingredients in certain spots, whilst the 

 rest of the seam retains its condition of ordinary coal (for such 

 is the case near Mount York and at Anvil Creek, the one in the 

 upper and the other in the lower coal measures ;) this very circum- 

 stance shows that no coal seam is excluded from the possibility 

 of exhibiting the phenomena in question. 



In a paper of mine, read before the Geological Society in 1866, 

 it was stated that the cannel of Stoney Creek (which for a time was 

 submitted to distillation on the North Shore) belonged to seams 

 that, by an anticlinal at Harpur's Hill, descended to the level of 

 Anvil Creek, where I saw the coal in 1842, in connection with the 

 marine fossils ; the presumption, therefore, was that oil-bearing 

 coal would occur there. This was realised by some trials made 

 by Mr. Keene, the Inspector of Coal Mines, in 1868, and in his 

 valuable collection from the coal measures, at last week's Exhi- 

 bition might be seen samples of all the varieties of coal, from the 

 ordinary mineral to the peculiar woodlike crystalline cannel, which 

 recalls to the mind the product of Petrolia. 



