304 A. LIVERSIDGE. 
deposited horizontally by means of an igneous liquid or perishable 
lava, and that quartz veins as well as some other dykes traversing 
constants had been the fissures of discharge,—the only unchanged 
existing solid remains of the ejected matter being gold, quartz, 
and some few other minerals besides clays and ferruginous earth ;” 
he advanced the theory because alluvial or placer deposit gold has 
often a fused appearance, and the metallic grains frequently 
present ragged and irregular surfaces, such as must have been 
destroyed by abrasion. He also gives other reasons, but they 
are equally valueless and unimportant. 
Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, F.G.s., formerly Government Geologist of 
New South Wales, refers in a paper read before the Royal Society 
of Victoria, 11 Sept. 1866 On the Theory of the Formation of Gold 
Nuggets in the Drift, p. 11, to Selwyn’s hypothesis viz. :—‘ that 
nuggets may have been formed, and generally that particles of 
alluvial gold may gradually increase in size through the deposition 
of metallic gold (analogous to the electroplating process), from the 
meteoric waters which circulate through the drifts, and which 
must have been, during the time of our extensive basaltic eruptions 
of a thermal, and probably highly saline, character, favourable to 
their carrying gold in solution,” and states that “ Daintree had on 
one occasion prepared for photographic use a solution of chloride 
of gold, leaving in it a small piece of metallic gold undissolved. 
Accidentally some extraneous substance, supposed to be a piece 
of cork, had fallen into the solution, decomposing it, and causing 
the gold to precipitate, which deposited in the metallic state, as. 
in the electroplating process, around the small piece of undissolved 
gold, increasing it in size to two or three times its original dimen- 
sions.” Wilkinson then made certain experiments to test 
Daintree’s theory. ‘‘ Using the most convenient salt of gold, the 
terchloride, and employing wood as the decomposing agent, in 
order to imitate as closely as possible the organic matter supposed 
to decompose the solution circulating through the drift, I first 
immersed a piece of cubic iron pyrites taken from the coal forma- 
tion of Cape Otway, and therefore less likely to contain gold than 
