THE NEW ZEALAND GOLDFIELDS.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 538, 3 August 1869, Page 2

THE NEW ZEALAND GOLDFIELDS.

Dr Hector has read a paper to the New Zealand Institute on the mode in which gold occurs in the North and South Islands of New Zealand. A Wellington contemporary gives the following digest of the paper:—The author rapidly reviewed the evidence as to the matrix of the gold in Otago, Westlanc, and Nelson, and showed that in the North Island the essential conditions for the presence of gold are only represented by lines of dislocation, which created vertical bands of metamoiphic rocks in formations that never yield gold in the unaltered state. In the case of the Thames, this vertical metamorphism had been accompanied by the eruption of igneous rocks. Around Wellington there were no igneous rocks, and the gold that has yet been found in the neighborhood was derived from bands of slavv rocks, or Hues of dislocation that rise in a north and south direction. With the assistance of colored sections he explained the geological structure of the country around Wellington, and compared it with the Thames district, showing the absence of the most characteristic rocks which are associated with gold there. He warned miners from expecting too much from thecompact quartz reefs that traverse the indurated sandstone in the neighborhood of Wellington, as most at least of them were of higher antiquity than the dislocations by which the gold has escaped from the deep seated rocks. In answer to Mr Marchant, the author stated that at Taranaki similar volcanic rocks occur as at the Thames, but no slate rocks had yet been found associated with them, which was required to complete the similarity of conaitions. At the same time he" had seen very likely looking specimens from the Kaitaki ranges, but they had not yielded gold on analysis.