38 NOTES ON GOLD. 
It is then carted about half a mile to No. 1 battery.” There are 
two batteries, one of ten the other of fifteen stampers, where about 
230 tons are passed through per week. 
The before-mentioned paper says :-—‘‘ The owners here possess 
an apparently inexhaustible deposit of auriferous quartz, and are 
able to mine it for almost a quarter of the usual cost. They are 
very reticent as to the amount of stone they are putting through 
and the yield obtained ; but we understand about 100 tons are 
being crushed at No. 1 battery, and 130 at No. 2, weekly. The 
return is said to be not less than 5 ozs. to es ton. 
While, however, especially from a geological point of view, the 
occurrence of this gold is highly interesting, the character of the 
gold obtained is not less so. Lock, in his work on gold, published 
1882, says :—“ No gold has yet been found in nature unalloyed 
with silver,” yet this gold from the Mount Morgan Mine, of which 
since February last already over 10,000 ozs. have been received as 
retorted gold at the Sydney Mint, is found to be free from silver— 
a minute trace excepted. I have brought some of this retorted 
gold rolled out very thin to show its toughness. It assays 99 and 
7-10ths per cent. of gold ; the rest is copper, with a trace of iron. 
Gold assaying 99 and 7-10ths per cent. is worth £4 4s. 8d. per 
0z. from 1 i i 
high as 99 and 8-10ths. per cent. It is, as far as I know, the 
richest native gold hitherto found. The richest gold next to this 
comes, I believe, from Maryborough, Victoria, which assays 99 
and 3-10ths per cent. ; while that from its namesake in Queensland 
contains only 85 per cent. gold. 
F. B. Miller, in his paper on “Gold-refining by Chlorine Gas,” 
read before this Society in 1869, alludes to the curious fact that 
as a rule the gold contains more silver as we go northwards, giving 
the average fineness of ip tee i as 96 per cent., New South 
Wales, 93 per cent., and Q and, 87 per cent. He sa: says, how- 
ever, «these are averages any. Tei is not is be supposed that there 
is a regular and consecutive diminution in fineness with e 
degree of latitude we go north. ar are exceptional localities in 
the north of this Colony, as at Rocky River, where the gold is over 
96 per cent.” To these exceptions le must now add the gold from 
ount Morgan. — 
