14 The Formation of Gold Nuggets. 
Organic substances, such as fragments of wood, roots of 
trees, &c., exist abundantly in the gold drifts. It remains 
therefore a point of great importance to decide whether gold 
is actually in solution in the meteoric water circulating 
through our rocks and drifts. Iam not aware of direct ex- 
periments having been made to solve this question, but that 
gold will most probably be found, is indicated by an 
analysis made by Mr. Daintree. I quote his own words :— 
“In testing a solid mass of iron pyrites gold was found 
throughout. This mass retained the structure of a tree stem, 
and was a replacement of the organic structure by pyrites, 
and had been taken from the Ballarat drift. The same ex- 
periment on another tree stem, taken from the same drift, 
has been repeated by Mr. Newbery, the Geological Survey 
Analyst, with a like result. 
I referred to the mammillary form the gold assumes in 
No. 2 specimen, which appears to be analagous to that pre- 
sented by the surface of nuggets. Analogy, however, though 
generally a truthful guide, if relied upon too implicitly in 
outward semblances, may lead to erroneous conclusions. 
Nevertheless the striking similarity in the surface of the 
artificial production to that of the natural gold is a point 
worth noticing. For if the form of the latter is the result of 
abrasion of its surface by the material carried along by the 
streams that once swept down the courses of our old “ leads,” 
then our analogy will not hold good. Yet when we have no 
evidence of the existence of such large nuggets in the reefs, 
and this theory introduces a means of producing results like 
those in nature, we are justified, in the absence of such evi- 
dence, to attribute these results to analogous causes. Other-- 
wise to what origin shall we ascribe the presence of gold in 
pyrites that has been formed in wood imbedded in the 
auriferous drifts, and the fact that sometimes gold encloses 
a nucleus of brown iron ore, Wc., unless it was deposited from 
solution ? 
That gold may be greatly purified by dissolving and re- 
precipitating it is strong evidence in favour of the theory 
attributing to a similar cause the greater purity or higher 
standard generally of alluvial than reef gold. 
It would be premature for me to speculate further on the 
hypothesis of the growth of gold—the formation of nuggets 
in the drift, on which the above recorded few simple experi- 
ments may perhaps throw some light—until the result of 
more comprehensive and systematic experiments which are 
