What a Wellington Writer Says About it. Wellington, Sept. 14.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 220, 17 September 1887, Page 4

What a Wellington Writer Says About it. Wellington, Sept. 14.

Reports of lich results from the as..>a}sof ore from the recent find at Hikutaia have awakened a good deal of interest in Wellington, and the " Evening Press "' dc\o(es an article to warning its rcadeis agam^t entertaining " false hopes " on the stungth of what professes to be independent itiloL mation. Alludingto the reef, the " J'iu-s " says: "The truth is, this is no now discovery, but merely a ie-disco\ory, <■»• rather the republication of a diseoveiy m.i-lc long ago. Unless we are greatly mistaken, this wonderful reef is the same curious Imt disappointing formation which is. fully debCiibed in an official report of the "Cologioal Department in 1870. It 1-, not, pioperly speaking, a gold-bearing reef ul till, but merely a large ban-en reef of win to quartz rising to considerable elevation, and beating on its summit or peak a mas-, of lock, evidently volcanic, and not connected geologically with the reef itself. This mass of rock or ash, or both, for it is a great mixturo, is full of iree gold, or gold and silver alloy, and i mining through it are black veins containing siUli in a very unusual form. Unlortunuie'y, however, there is very little of it, and what there is does not by any meant-, fulhl the la\ i&h expectations which the specimen^ ate calculated to create. The numennss assays, the appetising results of whit-h have recently been published, are altogether misleading, because they deal \w(h onl^ small pieces, we might almost say pat tides, picked from the rock where the v uold is actually visible. We have seen one of these pieces about as l.nge a, a nut and examined it carefully under the microscope. To unscientific eyes itlooks like a conglomeration of quartz, eiy-,-tais and cinders with rusty place? heie and there, and flakes of pale yellow metal scattored freely through it. This specimen is calculated to yield 14 ounces to the ton,supposing the rest of the ton were like the .specimen. The fact is,therebt of thetonin'ghl not contain another piece as rich, or enough of such pieces at all events to pay for the crushing and the chemical processes necessaiy for separating the metals. These delusive indications of the reefs at Hikutaia have many times been observed before, but nothing has occurred, as far as wo can learn, to sustain the belief that a rich gold mine exists there. The mass of rock which has been superimposed on the barren white 1 eef by volcanic action in some far distant a^e doubtless came from a spot wheie gold abounds, and it brought a little gold with it ; but that is most likely all theie i^> in it, We sincerely hope we are entirely wrong. Nothing would please us better than lo hear that the worthy folks of JTikutaia have broken into a jeweller's shop with cellars of the Bank of England underneath it, but we do not expect to hear of anything of the kind, and that our ideas are shared by a good many who ought to know, is shown by the absence of any appreciable excitement in commercial circles in Auckland."