GOLD AT DEPTHS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 1002, 12 October 1871, Page 2

GOLD AT DEPTHS.

fDAYXESFORD MERCURY AND EXPRESS] 1 Mr T. Carpenter, best known as an assayer, and for his unsuccessful attempts some years ago, at Bendigo, to extract, not sunbeams from cucumbers, but gold from pyrites, has been engaged in a newspaper controversy with Professor M'Coy. It will be rembered that, in 1857, a Royal Commission was appointed, composed of Professor M'Coy, Mr Selwyn, the then Government geologist, and Mr Panton, warden, to inquire into and report upon " the extent and .permanence of our gold fields." The commissioners, after taking evidence, arrived at conclusions that were certainly practically : wrong, if not theoretically false. After citing: numerous instances in which reefs that had been rich at the surface, had proved poor at depths varying from 50ft to 200 ft. from grass, the commissioners remarked:— "These examples might tie greatly multiplied, but enough hay* been probably given to vindicate scientific inductions ; and, whilst tfie cummissionera would caution capitalists against the erection of such great permanent mining buildings on a great. quartz reef as would be judicious on a copper lode, for instance, they would yet congratulate the country on the fact that, although in any one spot the gold deposits will be worked out in a vertical direction, the horizontal extension of these beds and veins are immensely greater than people are yet aware of." Now, had the commissioners confined themselves to laying down the gene* ral propositions that the caps of the auriferous, lodes had been richer than any other portion, and that in other gold producing countries the reefs declined in value the further they , receded from the surface, the assertions would have been unanswerable. . In support; of the first it is necessary only to point to the admitted fact, that none of the nuggets discovered in the matrix will compare in size with those found in the alluvium and drift. The great detached mass of quartz and gold picked upby^a blackfellow on a New South. Wales station, and that attracted the diggers to that colony* fias never been equalled by any specimen taken from' a quartz mine there, or in Victoria. Now* as every one acknowledges that the alluvial, gold was derived from the original reefs, it follows that the original surface must have abounded to a far greater extent in; the precious metal, than the rock w it now is, worn down by the action of* ancient seas, abd the atmosphere from an unknown height. And, with regard to the second ' point, we have the authority of that eminent man of science,' Sir Roderick Murchison, that in all the older auriferous regions, the yield of the auriferous lodes has decreased with the depth. This ia not » mere speculation, but a question of fact, that is easily verified, and as no one •••ms

to dispute??-* the correctness of Sir Roderick's allegation, we must, of course, assume-it- to be-true. - -But- Professor M'Coy and the other commissioners^ in their haste to " vindicate scientific inductions," were too sweeping in their gene-i ralisations. It was assumed that what was true of other countries must necessarily apply to Australia, and here Professor M'Coy and his colleagues fell into a very common mistake. Mr Carpenter, as a practical mining engineer, challenged the conclusion of the commissioners at the time, and he has lately seized another opportunity to have a shot at the learned Professor. Of course there can be no comparison between the scientific attainments of the two. Professor M'Coy, as a geologist; is, compared with Mr Carpenter, as Lombard street to a China orange," but the latter, nevertheless, is much better qualified to discuss the details of mining than his far more able antagonist. When, therefore, Mr Carpenter points out that the commission virtually declared deep Binking to be nn-, profitable because a number of the reefs referred to had gradually become poorer as they were followed down, and discouraged the erection of machinery for a similar reason, it must be confessed that he has the Professor on the hip. Not only have the lodes been wrought vertically, but to a depth more than treble that reached in 1857. And we believe, since Sir Roderick Murchison published the first edition of Siluria he has modified his views of the gold formation in this colony, while, in refutation of the commissioners' theory— that 100 ft or 200ft 1 would form the limit at which our auriferous veins would be worked to advantage —we have Watson and Co., ; of Hustler's Reef, Bendigo, getting large dividends from a depth of 750 ft. This, too, is one of the very reefs alluded to by the com missioners as non-remunerative below 60ft. But the vein of gold was only temporarily lost, and, by sinking deeper, the proprietors of the claim have found the quartz, if not as rich as at the surface, sufficiently so to give great yields. The error of the Professor and hw colleagues,; and one which Sir Roderick Murchison carefully guarded himself against, was in assigning a limit to the operations of the miner. It may be true that even in Australia the lodes will not be found to pay below a certain point, but no one canindicate it. We know by experience that the boundary line cannot be drawn at 700ffc, and we question whether even Professor M'Coy himself would now venture to define it at 1000 or even 2000 feet. At the same time we do not admire the flip-, pant references of Mr Carpenter to a man superior in every sense of the word to himself but in knowledge of practical mining. The fact that our quartz lodes may yield large returns at a depth of 760 feet, if not more thau double that distance from the surf ace, should stimulate mining in Daylesford and on every gold -field. In this district at least the deepest of our quartz shafts has hardly penetrated ■ the rock mors than half the distance of the rich mines at Bendigo.