7 
-of ironstone and quartz. Very fine white clay (pipeclay) occurs abundantly, 
and generally to a depth of ioo feet. These rocks can be sunk into 
with the pick and shovel alone. 
In their aspect these rocks typify the beds that are productive of gold 
in this State. The rocks are soft, and the surface is consequently rounded 
off in smooth contours. The beds are highly coloured by iron oxides, and 
stained in a manner that gives the clue to the formation of nodules in 
solid beds of rock. The sandstones, mudstones, and slate are often 
covered, where exposed to> the air, with a magnesian salt (probably sul¬ 
phate of magnesia) as an efflorescence. On account of the facility with 
which it deliquesces, the sandstones at the surface commonly fret away 
quickly, and the slates underground are commonly covered with a thick 
coating of capillary crystals. All the features of the auriferous zones of 
Ordovician and Silurian strata are very well developed in the unaltered 
Ordovician rocks of Wedderburn, and to some extent also in the meta- 
morphic rocks. 
To the east of Wedderburn the rocks are metamorphic—highly mica¬ 
ceous schists, &c.—the alteration due, no doubt, to contact with the under¬ 
lying granitic rocks which outcrop at intervals on the flat east of the 
town. The altered portion of the Ordovician rocks, stretching N., W. and 
S. from the Torpichen pre-emptive right, have proved auriferous, both 
alluvial and reef having been worked there. The belt of rocks westward 
from, Wedderburn presents unusually favorable appearances for gold, and 
the manner in which the flats and gullies have been torn up by alluvial 
workings proves that the appearances are not illusory. Prominent charac¬ 
teristics of the alluvial gold were its coarseness and the patchy manner 
in which it was distributed. 
Reef mining has not been developed in a manner at all commensurate 
with the alluvial workings. There are few shafts exceeding ioo feet in 
depth, and the reason for this appears to be that this gold-field lies within 
the great indicator area that forms the heart of the principal gold-bearing 
tract of the State, a tract extending from 8 to io miles north of Wedder¬ 
burn, southward to Meredith and Steiglitz, and from Newbridge on the 
E. to Stuart Mill on the W. Reefs that appear to have the characteristics 
of saddle country do occur, such as the Jubilee and Specimen Hill reefs, 
about a mile N.W. from the town; but these are exceptional. Indicators 
are the rule, and they appear to be developed to an unusual extent, and 
in a manner that does not appear to have been grasped by the miners, so 
far. If once this is made clear, it should result in a complete resuscita¬ 
tion of the gold-field, and, instead of fewer than 20 miners being at 
work, hundreds should find profitable employment. The indicators at 
Wedderburn are beds, some of extreme thinness, and up to 2 feet thick, 
or more. Where quartz veins intersect them gold occurs. The whole 
country is veined with quartz, and once anv of the indicators is met with 
it could not be followed far without encountering a quartz vein. As the 
indicators are beds, they are easily followed, and miners soon become 
expert in tracing them for long distances. 
Although indicators have long been recognised as a feature of this 
field, their relations to the anticlinal lines do not appear to have been 
recognised. 
As at Bendigo, the structure of the rocks here is that they are bent 
into a series of anticlinal and synclinal 'folds—corrugated, in fact. At 
Wedderburn the folds recur at shorter intervals than at Bendigo. These 
anticlines are exposed in the cutting at the railway station; in a length 
•of about 200 yards five anticlines occur. A feature in which they 
•differ from the Bendigo^ folds is that the beds are not so regularly arched, 
