FACTS ABOUT QUARTZ REEFS.

Southland Times, Issue 1191, 4 January 1870, Page 3

FACTS ABOUT QUARTZ REEFS.

The present distinguished Government geologist of New South Wales, the Bey. 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 G-oldfields of New South Wales," (1860) :— " In travelling between Taradale and Castleraaine, I was much struck with the fact that the roads are being made with auriferous quartz that is considered too poor to crush except by ■wheels, and yet the finds by the roadmakers are sometimes great." (p. 265.) ... . . " 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 ; the popular mind not realising the possibility of a hard crystaline rock 1 being saturated, . as it were, with gold, without any appearance of it in a tangible form." (p. 253.) . . . _ . "It is remarkable that in quartz yielding from 7to 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 : lens." (p. 254) . . . "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 has been exposed some time , to atmospheric action ; provingby examples which many persons at the goldfields could ' furnish, that the separation of gold from . the matrix still goes on at the present [ day." (p. 278.) .... "There is no r positive certainty that any given reef will be found equally rich throughout, or even auriferous all through, (p. 259.) .... "Though an experiment may succeed so ) far as a small individual mass of quartz \ is concerned, within a short distance of it , the quartz may be found barren." (p. 260.) j ..... "There is need of this f 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 ! " (p. 265.) > SThich facts or considerations are to be » b;eld as proving that all gold diggings, | though more especially quartz-reefing., are a grand lottery .in which, while there are a few prizes, tnere are more blanks.