A GEOLOGICAL HOTCH-POTCH.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2630, 22 July 1871, Page 3

A GEOLOGICAL HOTCH-POTCH.

down. [Our readers will naturally ask whether or not the reporter of the Greymouth Evening Star joined the learned doctor in his whisky toddy.—E'.', E. *S'.]

The Omjmouih Star has the following morceaU ;—Ur Hector was delivering one of. his interesting and able lectures on geology the other day at Greymouth. Of course in such a place he merged into the subject of gold; and he explained that “ gold was a Highly metalliferous substance, which was always found, when not found any wliere else, in quartzose formations traversing palreozoic laminated schists, near eruptive or igneous oolites, but sometimes aqueous, and in Silurian sedimentary accumulations in a depressed state of metamorphosis.” After descanting on the pecnlarities of the banks of the Grey River, he was about to sit down when a gentleman respectfully asked whether Dr Hector had any theory of his own as to the cause aud origin of gold. Passing the palm of his right hand from the left to the right side of his thoughtful brow, the lecturer said he believed he had. He proceeded to say that in the remote antiquity of past ages-in the cycles of revolving centuries, When .truth had merged into fable, 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 bird? It was believed by the philosophers and savans, and he believed it also himself, that quartzsyas 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 something as like feathers as anything else might be distinctly noticed. If he might venture a conjecture in the presence of so enlightened an atulieuce, he would say that gold was the broken aud dispersed metalliferised yolks of the ancient moa. He hoped he should not be considered guilty of committing the vulgarity of making a pun, hut he asked was there anything mua likely. A gentleman would like to know whether Dr Hector thought the moon had anything to do with the production of gold. Dr Hector thought not not, aud instanced the ca-e of the Moonlight, which was altogether a wild conjecture. Another gentleman thought the origin of gold might he traced to the sun ; hut the lecturer could not coincide with this theory, and referred to the Sunrise. The lecturer having asked to be supplied with a glass of whisky, sat