FACTS ABOUT QUARTZ REEFS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 15, 18 January 1870, Page 2

FACTS ABOUT QUARTZ REEFS.

The present distinguished Government geologist of New South Wales, the Rev. W. B. Clarke of Sydney — who has done more than any other individual in any part of the world towards applying science to the development of goldfields — thus writes in his "Researches in the Southern Goldfields of New South Wales," (I860):— "In travelling betsveen Taradale and Castlemaine, I was much struck with the fact that the roads are beiug made with auriferous quartz that is considered to poor to cru3h except by wheels, and yet the finds by the roadmakers are sometimes great." . . . " Many veins or 'reefs,' as some call them, of quartz, which are not visibly auriferous, have been treated with contempt, because no great amount of alluvial gold has been found in their vicinity; tbe popular mind not realising the possibility of a hard crystaline rock being, saturated as it were, with gold, without any appearance of it in a tangible form." . . . "It is remarkable that in quartz yielding from 7 to Boz. to the ton, the gold is often barely perceptible, and in much that produces as high as 5 oz. it cannot be observed even by the aid of a powerful leus." . . . "It is, moreover, a very well known fact that a heap of detritus, from which all the gold has been apparently taken out, will yet supply gold after it bas been exposed some time to atmospheric action ; proving by examples which many persons at the goldfields could furnish, that the separation of gold froni the matrix still goes on at the present day." . . . "There is no positive certainty that any given reef will be fouud equally rich throughout, or even auriferous all through. " Though au experiment may succeed so far as a small individual mass of quartz is concerned, within a short distance of it the quartz may be fouud barren/' . . . " There is need of this warning, again given, that neither all reefs, nor all parts of any reef, are equally rich ; and where some make their fortunes, many others are beggared 1" Which facts or considerations are to be held as proving that all gold diggings, though more especially quartz-reefing are a grand lottery ia which, while there are a few prizes, there are more blanks.