DEDICATION. 
TO 
R. BROUGH SMYTH, F.G.S., &c, &c, 
Secretary, and virtual Head of the Victorian Mining Department ; 
and Arbiter of the Gold Discoverers' Reward 
Appropriation Fund, 
To whom the Author is indebted for the Department's per- 
sistently inconsiderate denial of his claims to recognition for 
public services to Mining : 
1st. As the first publisher to Government (June 7, 1851) 
of the discovery (by another, then deceased) of a stated 
locality disclosing a deposit of payable alluvial gold in Vic- 
toria : and this at the critical period when an alarming exodus 
of Victorian population to the Bathurst gold-fields, and con- 
sequent paralysis of Victorian industries, was imminent ; 
the priority of publication of the then cheering news being 
amply demonstrable by incontrovertible evidence recorded in 
the Chief Secretary's archives, and by reference to the 
Melbourne daily press of its stated date. But while R. 
H. Hargreaves, the abundantly-rewarded discoverer of gold in 
New South Wales, who drew off our population to foreign 
diggings thereby, has been rewarded by the Victorian Legis- 
ture with honours and a grant of £5,000 ! the well-meant 
attempt of the local discoverer (that is, the first publisher of 
