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Mines and Mineral Statistics. 
of Carboniferous rocks had suffered such changes, or the beds of 
the series which now exhibits itself in various outliers had under- 
gone the process. IVIy friend Mr. Lowe, of Gooree, has made a 
most extensive collection of these altered fragments, in which 
are many most beautiful specimens. It will probably never be 
rivalled, as he collected them from time to time as thev were 
disinterred by the diggers. A great number also were coated 
with a shining transparent envelope of what I believe to be a 
deposit of silicified water. Elsewhere (Trans. Eoy. Soc., 1870, 
j). 11) I have dwelt upon this ; and it also attracted the attention 
of Professor Thomson and Mr. Norman Taylor. These deposits 
are frequently covered by a great thickness of basalt, upon which 
frequently lies a more recent drift partly derived from older 
drifts. The colours of the alluvia, now long exposed, rival in 
some degree those poikilitic hues which distinguish the west end 
of the Isle of Wight. 
A drift of local kind also occurs over large areas in Maneero 
in the neighbourhood of the auriferous strata, as also in New 
England over the country of the tin mines, which exhibits the 
same sort of alluvia as the gold fields, and in which also gold 
occurs. In 18.51-3, when I first discovered Tin in the Colony, it 
was generally in association with gold and gems. Messrs. 
Ulrich, Wilkinson, and Liversidge have since that time made local 
explorations both in the alluvia and in tlie beds from which they 
have been derived. There are dojmsits of ojoals besides those in 
the gold drifts ; and on Lawson’s Creek a feeder of the Cudge- 
gong agate breccias and opals occur. Opaline veins also occur in 
the basin of tlie Abercrombie Eiver, and in that of the Yictoria 
of Queensland. 
At the mouths of the Eichmond and Clarence Rivers gold is 
found distributed in the sands and covering pebbles of the sea 
beacli; a similar distribution is found in the sands of Shell 
Harbour (where the accumulations abovenamed occur) and some 
gold was extracted. Other spots give similar indications ; and one 
specimen of gold was brought up from the sea bottom by the 
sounding o])crations of H.M.S. “ Herald,” off Port Macquarie. 
Gilded pebbles also occur on the west coast of New Zealand. 
Numerous instances have also been recorded of gold having 
been found in the gizzards of wild fowl and of domestic poultry, 
in vai'ious parts of the Colony, confirming, with the above-men- 
tioned facts, the almost universal distribution of the precious 
metal in river-drifts and superficial deposits. Some of the above- 
named examples of gold collected by birds were exhibited by me 
at Sydney and in Paris in 1855, and are still in my possession. 
All along the coast, from Torres Strait to Bass’s Strait drift 
pumice may be found wherever there is a lodgment, generally in 
the north corner of the little shore bays. That this has gone on 
