A MISCONCEPTION

Hokitika Guardian, 27 February 1931, Page 2

A MISCONCEPTION

THE PRESERVATION INLET EXPEDITION. AUCKLAND, February 20. The reports that the geologists’ expediton to Preservation Inlet, under Dr W. N. Benson, of the University of Otago, found rich auriferous reefs, is denied by Professor J. A. Bartrum. Professor Bartrum, who holds the chair of geology at Auckland University College, was a member of the party, and he returned to Auckland this morning. He said that the expedition was purely scientific, and that any investigation into the economic advantages of the region was merely incidental. The expedition did come across distinct traces of gold-bearing quartz, though they were not present in quantity or in richness. The report in the Press had come about through a misconception. One of the party, Mr R. A. Keeble, of the National Museum at Melbourne, had said that there was considerable similarity between the rocks of the Bendigo goldfields and those common at Preservation Inlet. The expedition was seeking an ancient species of fossil known as grapholite, It had been found in the Victorian goldfields, and the gold lodes had occurred in those fields in very definite levels, marked by characteristic grapholites. While that was of economic importance to Victoria, it was not necessarily so in the Dominion. Still, it was true that wherever gold traec r had been discovered in the region under examination, grapholites had invarjably been present. That was also so at Collingwood, in Nelson.