exactly
as where a lolly-maker runs hot sugary fluids into a mass of, we will
say, fractured biscuit. I cannot help thinking that much of such
deposition and removal was brought about suddenly by a comparatively
quick change in temperature, there being in the solid quartz in such
situations many pieces of slate apparently too large to allow of their
transformation otherwise. I nave directed attention to the fact more
than once in various reports that these, as it were, bulged areas on
lode systems, constitute the quartz-mining centres of our State. The
pronounced form of their deposition of gold—a deposition easily
perceptible to the eye in outcrops—a deposition that insured richness
of the alluvial deposits derived therefrom, attracted the first
attention of the diggers. From wash-dirt mining they went to quartz,
and, since the first rush of diggers in 1851, they have been following
the more favoured parts in these areas of concentrated quartz—parts
favoured because a greater circulation, in more open lines of fracture,
admitted of greater concentration of valuable minerals. The miners
endeavoured to follow the erratic lines formed by the series of the
points or shoots of favoured parts to depths, and, considering the
small amount of knowledge prevalent concerning the relation of lode
structure to the deposition of minerals in payable form, they succeeded
very well; the call-payers, however, having as a rule no knowledge on
such matters, were not susceptible to reason, even when intelligent
mining managers pointed the way to further prosperity ; and,
accordingly, deep mining in such localities ceased.
The
time will come when our time of mining will be referred to as the "
where it is, there it is " time—as the time when the richness or
otherwise of
