Little Bendigo Gold Field

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	As far as concerns the gold-fields of the State, the lateral pressure on the rock layers has been so intense that the dip in the sides of the arches of the corrugation varies between the vertical and about 45 degrees from it, seldom more than the latter. Thus it comes about that most of the drains run nearly parallel to the strike and dip of the strata. A twist has produced the usual result peculiar to such a movement; that is a fracture down and along the rock masses, creating many receptacles for the lode matter from thsse drains. Deposition of gold quartz and sulphides took place in suitable positions, exactly as dust is retained on the bump of a wall, on on any plane other than vertical. The greater the deviation from the vertical of the plane of the obstruction to the force of gravity, the more nuggetty the deposition of gold. (See Fig. 1.)


	Owing to the fact that the quartz lodes of Little Bendigo, in common with that of the lodes of the Ballarat district, are the result of an intense twist movi ment of the rock masses, thera are many examples of the class of formation known in the Stawell and Maldon Gold-fields as " Magpie," as in Plate V. and Fig. 2 (a). This name was suggested to the miners, on account of the contrast



	in black and white, to be seen where quartz is distributed in veins in a black or dark-coloured slate. This class of lode has its gold deposits scattered, the compound fracturing having created numerous small catchments for the minerals coming into it from slate drains. In other words, the gold deposits occur in patches through wide extents of compound fracture rather than as concentrated in one comparatively large fracture as in Fig. 2 (b).

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