Mines and Mineral Statistics. 
29 
Although the surface of many of the hills presents sufficient 
indications that granitic or other transmuting agencies are not 
far distant, these latter have not been denuded. Iji such locali- 
ties the operations of the miner frequently disclose trap dykes 
filling short irregular fissures, and slates, and interstratified sand- 
stone, tilted, contorted, altered, riven, and fractured in eveiy 
imaginable direction. These broken and disturbed strata are 
often silicified and reconsolidated by threads and veins of a 
metalliferous quartz or calcspar, and sometimes these threads 
and veins are highly auriferous in small patches. Occasionally 
they occur so frequently as to give the stratum the character of 
a lode, but more generally such formations only tempt the miner 
to prosecute a search for a reef that he is not destined to find ; 
hence we hear so much about leaders and hopes to strike the 
reef which are never realized. It is in similar formations, simi- 
larly acted upon by eruptive trap dykes, where the iron lias been 
converted into a brown oxide, and the silica and lime removed in 
solution, and the strata decomposed and converted into a red- 
brown striated clay, that small nests of golden nuggets are found in 
sitio where there is neither gravel nor watercourse, and perhaps 
a single find is the sole return for the labour of many mouths 
and a large expenditure. 
AVhen these interstratified sandstones occur and there is no 
evidence of cleavage or jointing, the breaking up lias been most 
irregular; and as the resistance to the upheaving masses has been 
overcome by a general fracture of the superincumbent deposits, 
it is imjirobable that any well defined fissures will liave been 
formed ; the result has been the narrow veins and threads of 
quartz that so abundantly interlace the older stratified deposits. 
I have been somewhat particular in my description of this 
peculiarity of this section of the district; many have foundered 
upon the formation I have described, and few understand it; more 
than one well organized company has attempted to sink through 
sucli a stratum tilted to an angle of SO degrees, in the hope of 
finding an EL dorado at the bottom. 
On several leads discovered and worked during the past year 
it has been proved that the deepest ground is not auriferous ; 
shafts have been sunk to depths varying from 110 to IGO feet 
and bottomed upon a wash dirt that differed in no respect from 
that obtained in adjoining claims at depths of from SO to 00 feet, 
except that the former did not contain any gold, while the hitter 
yielded from 10 to 15 pennyweights per load; these watercourses 
run in a parallel direction, and are not 100 yards distant from 
each other. (^Vide Section A annexed.) 
A band of argillaceous limestone of an unascertained depth 
and width, in which no fossils have been as yet discovered, 
extends from the bank of the Lachlan Eiver due north, and inter- 
