The Gold Fields and Mineral Districts of Victoria

Abstract

II.

ALTHOUGH large quantities of gold are obtained from the detrital accumulations which overlie the palaeozoic rocks of Victoria, there can be no doubt that they have come originally from the decomposition and removal of the auriferous quartz veins by which these rocks are traversed. The gold is simply a part of the detritus, in the same way that the fragments of quartz, sandstone, and slate are. Each nugget and bit of gold is only a more or less water-worn pebble, its edges being, as a rule, less worn, and its size larger, the nearer it is found to its parent reef. Yet some writers have endeavoured to show that the nuggets really grow by a kind of accretion, each fragment of gold becoming larger by successive depositions of the metal held in solution in the water percolating through the gravels. Mr. Brough Smyth, in discussing these and other disputed questions, usually avoids the expression of any decided opinion of his own. He treats them very much as a judge treats the evidence at a trial, and he leaves the decision to the jurymen, his readers. Yet we can very commonly guess what his opinions are, though he may not expressly state them. He gives us a tolerably copious account of opinions which have been published relative to the origin of quartz veins, and among these a valuable series of notes and sections specially made for him by a mining engineer of repute in the colony. The whole of this subject is, he says, involved in obscurity; “and though it is not possible for any one who has given attention to it to attach equal weight to the several theories which have been proposed, he would do wrong rashly to dismiss any of them as altogether improbable.” Perhaps a judicial summing-up of this kind was, in the circumstances, better than the keen advocacy of any one theory. What is of value to the engineer in the colony is, to know what has really been written about the veins; and this he can learn with ease and satisfaction from Mr. Smyth's pages.

The Gold Fields and Mineral Districts of Victoria.

By R. Brough Smyth. (Melbourne: J. Ferres; London: Trübner and Co.)