Mines and Mineral Statistics. 
201 
In other publications I have treated of them; and since then, 
the Bingera Diamond Field has received careful attention from 
Professor Liversidge -who has tleseribed its condition accuratelj. 
Tliose found since 18G0 have fully justified the heading of iny 
notice published that year (“ Southern Gold Fields,” p. 272 ), — 
“ IN'ew SovTn "Wales a Diamo^jd Coentry.” 
Some years since I reported on the occurrence of mercury in 
this Colony ; but ray expectation of the discovery of a lode of 
Cinnabar has been disappointed. The Cinnabar occurs on the 
Cudgegong in drift lumps and pebbles, and is probably the result 
of springs, as in California. In New Zealand and in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Clarke lliver, North Queensland, the same ore 
occurs in a similar way. About 1841 I received the first sample 
of quicksilver from the neighbourhood of the locality on Carwell 
Creek, on the Cudgegong, where the cinnabar is found. I pro- 
posed a full examination of that locality when I was in the 
neighbourhood in February, 1875 ; but the state of the weather 
was such as to preclude the possibility of doing so during my 
limited stay. But I was informed that the progress of the mine 
was satisfactory. 
As connected with the drifts may be mentioned the occurrence 
of gems of all kinds in all the rivers wFero auriferous deposits 
occur, and subsequent years have only served to abundantly 
confirm my statement of 1S60 as to the general distribution of 
them in the gold-bearing districts. 
In examining the gold alluvia at a variety of shafts about Gul- 
gong, Home Eule, and other places in the county of Phillip, I 
was struck by three prominent circumstances which have bearings 
upon the present and future of that region. 
1. No shaft is, so far as I learned, deeper than 200 feet. 
2. The gravels of the alluvia were composed of pebbles and 
fragments of rock common in the vicinity — derived from 
Carboniferous and underlying strata, with occasional 
fossils. 
3. The quartz pebbles were in some cases perfectly rounded,^ 
in others the quartz was in fragmentary lumps, as if 
recently broken from reefs. These did not appear to occur 
together. 
The conclusion I drew from the latter fact was that two periods 
of destruction and one of abrasion of underlying reefs had taken 
place at an early period of alluvial deposition. A fourth circum- 
stance might be commented on. In the deposits of the shafts a 
multitude of well worn abraded lumps of jasper, silicified fossil 
wood, and semi-opal of various tints and chalccdonic interebanges, 
in some instances themselves decomposing, so as to exhibit the 
fibres of the wood from which they had been formed by transmu- 
tation, arrested attention, and showed that either an older series 
