ORIGIN AND MODE OF OCCURRENCE OF GOLD-BEARING VEINS. 131 



It is, however, being proved in this district that the rich shoots 

 or ore-bearing portions of the quartz veins lie some distance 

 below one another ; and continued sinking will probably pass 

 through a comparatively barren portion before reaching another 

 ore-shoot similar to the one already cut near the surface, and that 

 still further sinking will lead to other shoots being cut, As this 

 is certainly the characteristic of numerous quartz veins in 

 Australasia (as will be seen by other examples given) and also 

 agrees with the law being established in all parts of the world 

 with reference to metalliferous lodes in general, the same law is 

 most likely to be equally applicable to the quartz veins in this 

 district. 



Other veins in this place yielded silver ores, such as chloro- 

 bromides, &c., in conjunction with gold, and a large Stetefeldt 

 furnace was erected some years ago, with a dry-crushing battery 

 and other appliances, to treat such class of ores. Many other of 

 the quartz veins in this locality might be described. One very 

 peculiar deposit found, I may say, almost under my own eyes, was 

 upon the top of a small rise, upon the side of which some pieces 

 of gold of various sizes had been picked up. 



Six hundred ounces of gold, mixed with broken quartz, was 

 obtained in a sort of cleft in the rock some few feet wide at the 

 top of the said rise, and although a shaft was sunk about 100 feet 

 or so, no denned vein or lode was found, nor any more gold so 

 far as I have heard. I might say that a large amount of gold 

 was obtained from the district from the alluvial, evidently 

 traceable in most cases to the denudation of reefs, or some 

 particular reef ; and also, in some of the auriferous veins, copper, 

 silver, and lead ores, and many other minerals also occurred, but 

 mostly in small quantities. I might add that the formation of 

 the district just described is upper silurian, largely intersected by 

 igneous rocks in the form of dykes and veins, and granite country 

 lays to the east at a distance of about three miles from the 

 Wilson Hill Reef 



Perhaps no part of Victoria is more interesting in regard to 

 the great peculiarity of its auriferous quartz veins than Sandhurst, 

 and at the same time it is the centre of a most thriving mining 

 district. The saddle reefs of Sandhurst are almost unique in 

 their mode of occurrence. They appear to be irregular deposits 

 of auriferous quartz, formed upon either two planes of the rock 

 that intersect one another, such as bedding and jointing, or upon 

 an anticlinal arch in the paheozoic strata. 



The sketch plans illustrative of these veins (Figs. 11, 12, 14) 

 show the manner in which they occur in the country rock, and 

 as the sections are taken from the Garden Gully line of reef in 

 Sandhurst, they show the actual manner in which one of the said 



