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Hokitika Guardian, 4 July 1928, Page 2

The true solution of the secret of the gold deposits in Westland would be welcomed indeed. We referred this week to the possibility of a- gold-min-ing revival, and if the inner secret of ■nature as to how the gold • deposits were formed, and. the sure source of the gold yield were revealed, it would be an easier and more assured step to take regarding future prospecting pos-

sibilitios. Air Drummond, of the “Lyttelton Times’’ staff, who is a. very close student of nature in all her forms, gave some thought to this very subject in some notes published ’under his name last week. He was writing of the glacier age in AVestland, and the matter of gold deposits cropped up. He went on to say that “New Zealand’s ablest geologists do. not believe that the present alpine chain supplied the bulk of the alluvial gold won in North AVestland. The extinct glaciers carried large quantities of debris poor in gold. Alaterials known to miners as Old Man gravels is the immediate source of the greater part of that alluvial gold. Those gravels are characterised by the very decomposed nature of their pebbles and finer material. Usually they are very clayey. Oxido of iron has stained them brown or yellow. They were largely derived from coal-measure conglomerates. Much of the alluvial gold in those parts, probably, was freed from its matrix in early Tertiary times, before tlio vast expansion of the glaciers. A great river believed to have flowed north-west of Ross in the Early Pliocene broke up and concentrated the coal-measure conglomerates, and the Old Alan gravels have been assorted several times.- Streams that flowed on, in and under the glaciers received what gold tlie glaciers had, concentrated it with the Old Alan gravels, and left some rich deposits. The golden bed's to which Ross owes its very existence, and to which it looks for renewed prosperity, seem to be largely material deposited by streams that flowed in front of the old Alikonui Glacier. The scientists, however, do not reach finality on this important point, and a great deal is still left to theory. If what the “ablest geologists” aver is a basis for thought in this matter, then some scientific study of the relation between coal and alluvial deposits might be very helpful to tlio prospector. Unless something is done to assist the prospector in this way, the search for fresh goldfields is liable to cease altogether. In various other channels scientific research and investigation is. going on by tlio State, and though there is a geological branch attached to the Alines Department, more active work out of doors would lie welcomed a.s a more direct aid to the furtherance of gold-mining. The country owes .so much to gold mining for the initial development of New Zealand in connection with the gold “rush” days, that bearing in mind, it is not too much to ask for greater interest in tlio welfare of gold-mining as a means to opening tlio way to another era of gold producing days which judging by what has been revealed in the past, should not lie a remote possibility.