THE GENERAL DIFFUSION OF

Bruce Herald, Volume VI, Issue 402, 17 January 1872, Page 7

THE GENERAL DIFFUSION OF

The 'jfoi.lowihg 'extract is .from ,the 'Sydney Herald of Wctbber 6th. The facts which it so clearly states are as ap^plic'ableto New Zealand astb New South Wales':-^-

The business of mining htfs set 'in, and men of capital are settling down seriously to pound away at the reefs. 'I.t *s somewhat unfortunate that these reefing operations have 'fallen into the hands of speculators who have been characterised more by a desire for gold than "skill to extract it;. Their failures have thrown an amount of discredit upon the enterprise it does hot deserve, and will, of course, survive , Tor instances b'f success are not wanting 1 to prove that, f&r those who conduct their afeirs with spirit and 'intelligence, -great profit Is in store. v . There is a moral piirpb¥e, it may be inferred,'in the general diffusion of such a valuable metal as gold, for, next to irbn,it is the mbst widely diffused metal oh tba face of the earth. "It occurs 'in granite, file oldest) rock kndwn t6 us, and in all the rocks derived from it. It is also found in the veihs'boneS which traverse bther geological fdrraafidri's. . . , .

It is t&et with in the beds of the' present rivers from the granite-gathering grounds, and rocks. that have been changed by the action of fire. It is found also in the old beds over which these rivers have ptirsued ! their way in theft passage thr6ugh wide valleys as they shifted their course "from side (6 side. The miner now seeks it the beds of ancient rivers, long ( ago Itfet'tb si^ht tinder superincumbent 'formation's. But beyond these situations in which 'it can be discovered by the eye, there Jire others apparent only to "the chemist. The Rev. W. B. Clarke, Mr Selwyn, Mr Dain tree, &nd~some others j 'say the presence of gold may be looked 'for Th the secondary and tertiary formations ; that is to say "in formations very 'much younger than those which are often 'considered t& be typhical. Thus gdld has been derived from pyrites in greenstone"; 'in slate altered and indurated by heat-, as, .seen at Gympie; in coal shale, as In Victoria) where Mr Selwyn procured as much as six and a half pennyweights per 'ton from pyrites in such shale, and as Mr Da'intree has shown 'from the desert sandstone of Queensland. The chemist may yet further aid in the discovery of invisib'e sotircesof auriferous wealth ; and while ho is cooperating with the miner to give to the world the treasures of the earth, Nat lire is silently at work replenishing the store by deposi ting. g old from the decomposing rocks of aft and forming it as Mr" Clarke thinks, by precipitation front mineral waters holding it in salution. Our share of the gold scattered through the world, and found either in the mafri'i or out of it, visiblft or invisible, is for* 'tunately large. We stand upon a poshes"s'ion:that cannot be taken away— a possesion that should afford us hope and confidence with regard to the 'future. Mr Clarke informs us, and indeed we can how perceive by the maps chiefly due to his investigations-, that gold is, known to exist, in less or greater abundance throughout an area of which 'the limits are both of longitude and latitude, nearly nine degrees asunder, which, as he truly observes, is a sufficiently extensive reason to offer "expebV tation of many further developments of "he precious metal.