New South Wales . 
9 
gold. Nay, there is good reason to believe that the Carboniferous 
rocks are themselves impregnated, as in one remarkable instance 
on Peak Downs. In New Zealand gold sometimes occurs so 
mixed with siliceous particles as to constitute with them a golden 
sandstone. 
The distinctive differences in material mineral wealth between 
Victoria and New South Wales arc not altogether confined to 
gold or tin, which latter metal is well represented in New South 
Wales and Queensland ; but coal, iron, and copper, and perhaps 
lead, prove together more than an equivalent of the great amount 
of gold in Victoria. 
At the Universal Exhibition of 1854-5, the present writer 
exhibited a collection of rocks and fossils, illustrating the whole 
of the geological formations of Australia as then known, and 
these were enumerated in their stratigrapliical order in the 
published Catalogue. A few remarks on the various geological 
epochs, as they now represent themselves in New South Wales, 
with brief statements as to their connection with other portions 
of Australasia, may be all that is necessary on the present 
occasion. 
# Azoic and “ Metamorphic ” Bocks. 
There has not been sufficient evidence yet collected to show 
that these rocks extensively exist in Eastern Australia, although 
in Tasmania rocks of a doubtful class (and which may, perhaps, 
be only highly altered Lower Silurian) have been referred to them 
by Mr. Gould. The existence of gneissoid strata, and of schists 
of very ancient aspect, are also well known in New South Wales, 
with occasional unfossiliferous limestones ; but it would be pre¬ 
mature to place them, without doubt, under the present head. 
Mr. Daintree, however, describes them as the source of some 
gold in the Cape Biver and Gilbert Districts, to the north. Somo 
of those mentioned under the “ First Epoch ” of Strzelecki have, 
on close inspection, appeared to mo to be merely the products of 
transmutation ; nor is such an improbable result, seeing that in 
Australia some slates have apparently been changed into granitic 
rocks. It is at least certain that such rocks generally occur in 
the immediate vicinity of granites, which latter frequently occupy 
large areas both in Maneero and in New England, as well as along 
the Cordillera, and in independent masses along the coast. In 
Western Australia, where an enormous region is occupied by 
granites, and the older formations are represented only by small 
patches of slates, whilst the granites themselves remain bare, 
these patches are found on the flanks of the granitic bosses and 
at extremely wide intervals ; nor have I been able to detect among 
the numerous collections which have passed through my hands, 
any distinct evidence of any but doubtful examples of those 
