ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 33 



Elvers has more and more east off its obscurity. Copper, iron, 

 and gold have been found in fresh portions of that region ; and 

 even within four or five miles of the spot where Mr. Cunningham 

 lost his way in the scrubs, and finally his life, during Sir T. L. 

 Mitchell's Expedition of 1835, a lode of copper has been found, 

 in beds of metamorphic rock which the first explorers did not 

 know existed there. Moreover, several new gold fields have been 

 proclaimed in 1872-3. 



(1.) Another result to science and true mining industry had 

 been derived from examinations in the tin country to the north- 

 ward, — not by half or almost entirely ignorant mining managers, 

 but by skilled and properly educated geological surveyors, 

 qualified to report on all the delicate questions involved. 



Thus, in the " Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of 

 London, for February, 1873 " (vol. xxix) we have first a report, 

 read on 6th November, 1872, bearing date 2nd July, from Mr. 

 T. r. Grregory, in a letter to the Queensland Grovernmeut, and 

 communicated by the Earl of Kimberley to the Society. 



In this report Mr. Grregory gives the outlines of the stanni- 

 ferous region, the principal stream beds and fluviatile flats, and 

 some of the minor lodes or veins in the Queensland part of the 

 area ; one of the latter, as he says, traceable, at intervals, for nine 

 or ten miles. Mr. Aplin, whom he quotes, states that he met in 

 that area no other tin ore than the peroxide (cassiterite) which 

 is associated only with an " invariably red granite," the felspar 

 being a pink or red orthoclase, and the mica generally black, but 

 when tin is present m situ the mica is white. The granite, he 

 adds, is coarse-grained and readily disintegrating, with bands of 

 granitoid character highly micaceous, traversed by veins and 

 bauds of quartz, in which the tin ore abounds, as if they had been 

 local feeders in the courses of drainage. The crystals of tin ore 

 are found along the margin of the quartz veins, though some- 

 times in the micaceous portions, in which cases the mica is white. 

 " The strike of the bands and the distinct quartz veins is generally 

 N. E. and S,W. No tin floors, as at Elsmore mine, in New 

 South "Wales, had been discovered." This is an abstract only 

 of Mr, Aplin's notes. 



