A NEW GEOLOGICAL THEORY

Dunstan Times, Issue 485, 4 August 1871, Page 3

A NEW GEOLOGICAL THEORY

The Greymouth Star occasionally indulges in mild facetiousness. The following is its latest comic “bit"Dr. Hector was delivering one of his interesting and able lectures on geology the other day at Grey, mouth. Ofcourse insuoh a place hemerged into the subject of gold; and explained that “ gold was a highly metalliferous! substance, which was always found, when not found anywhere else in quartzose formations traversing palmozonic laminated schists near eruptive or igneous oolites, but sometimes aqueous, and in Silurian sedimentary accnm illations in a depressed state of metamorphosis.” After descanting on the peculiarities of the banks of the Grey River, ho was about to sit down when a gentlemen respectfully asked whether Dr. Hector had any theory of his otto as to the cause aud origin of gold. Passing the pa’tn of his right hand

from the left to the right side of his thought ful brow, the lecturer said he believed he had. fie proceeded to say that in the remote antiquity of past ages—in the cycles of revolving centuries, -when truth Lad merged inte fabl», and fable, by the process of algebraical ratiocination, had returned to its original orbit of truth, a report had gained currency of a description of goose which laid golden eggs. If a goose, then why not some other birdTlt was belie ved by the philosophers and savans, and he believed it also himself, that quartz was nothing else than enormous agglomerations of the feathers (highly crystallised) of birds of a race now extinct. This might be shown by placing a piece of quartz about the size of a water caraffe under a delicate microscope, with a three and three-quarter inch object glass, when some-thing as like feathers as anything else might be distinctly noticed. If he might venture a conjecture in the_ pcsence of so enlightened an audience, he would say that gold was the',broken [and dispersed metalliierised yolks of the ancient moa, : _He hoped he should not be considered guilty of committing vulgarity of making a pun, but he asked waSj there anything moa] likely. A gentlemen would like to know whether Dr. Hector thought the moon had anything to do with the production of gold. Dr. Hector thought not, and instanced the case of the Moonlight, which was alogetber a wild conjecture. Another gentlemen thought the organ of gold might be traced by the sun; hut the lecturer could not coincide with this theory, and refsred to the Sunrise. The lecture' having asked to be supplied with a glass of whisky, sat down.”