GOLD AT DEPTHS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 869, 3 October 1871, Page 3

GOLD AT DEPTHS.

(From the •' Daylesford Mercury and Express ") Mr T. Carpenter, best known as an assayer, and for his unsuccessful attempts some years ago, at Bendigo, to extract, not sunbeams from encumbers, but gold from pyrites, has been engaged in a newspaper controversy with Pro. fessor M'Coy. It will be remembered that, in 1857, a Royal Commission was appointed, composed of Professor M'Coy, Mr Selwyn, then the Government geologist, and Mr Panton, warden, to enquire into and report upon " the extent and permanence of our goldfields." The commissioners, after taking evidence, arrived at conclusions that were certainly practically* wrong, if not theoretically false. After citing numerous instances in which reefs tha/t had been rich at the surface, had proved poor at depths varying from 50ft. to 200 ft. from grass, the commissioners remarked ? —" These examples might be greatly multiplied, ' but enough have been probably given to vindicate scientific inductions; and, whilst the commissioners would caution capitalists against the erection of such great permanent mining buildings on a gold quartz reef as would be judicous on a'copper lode, for iustance, they would yet congratulate the country on the fact that, although in any one spot the gold deposits will be worked out in a vertical direction, the horizontal extension of t'jese beds and veins are immensely greater than people are yet aware of."" Now, had the commissioners confined themselves . to laying down the general propositions that the caps of the aufileroUs lodes had been richer than any other portion, and that in other gold producing countries the reefs declined in value the furtheT they receded from the surface, the assertions would have been unanswerable.

In support of the first it is necessary only to point to the admitted fact that none of the nuggets discovered in the matrix will compare in size with those found in the alluvium and drift. The great detached mass of quartz and gold picked up by a blackfellow on a New South Wale's station, and that attracted the diggers to that colony, has never been equalled by any specimen taken from a quartz mine there o • in Victoria. Now, as every one acknowledges that the alluvial gold was derived from the reefs, it follows that the original surface must have abounded to a far grater extent in the precious metal, than the rock as it now is worn down by the action of ancient seas, and the atmosphere, from an unknown height. And, with regard to the second point, we have the authority of that eminent man of science, Sir Eoderick Murchison, that in all the older auriferous regions, the yield of the auriferous lodes has decreased with the depth. This is not a mere speculation, but a question of fact, that is easily verified, and as no one seems to dispute the correctness of Sir Eoderick's allegation, we must assume it to be true. But Prof. M'Coy and the other commissioners, in their haste to " vindicate scientific inductions," were too sweeping in their generalisations. It wa3 assumed that what was true of other countries must neccessarily apply to Australia, and here Prof. M'Coy and his colleagues fell into a very common mistake. Mr Carpenter, as a practical mining engineer, challenged the conclusion of the commissioner at the time, and he has lately seized another opportunity to have a shot at the learned Professor. Of course there can he no comparison between ths scientific attainments of the two. Prof. M'Coy, as a geologist, is, compared with Mr Carpenter, as " Lombard-street to a China orange," but the latter, nevertheless, is much better qualified to discuss the details of mining than his far more able antagonist. When therefore, Mr Carpenter points out that the commission virtually declared deep sinking to be unprofitable because a number of the reefs referred to had gradually become poorer as they were followed down, and discourage the erection of machinery for a similar reason, it must be confessed that he has the Professor on the hip. Not only have the lodes been wrought vertically, but to a depth more than treble that reached in 1857. And we believe, since Sir Eoderick Murchison published the first edition of Siluria ho has modified his views of the gold formation in this colony, while, in refutation of the commissioners' theory—that 100 or 200 feet would form the limit at which our auriferous veins could be worked to advantage—we have Watson and Co., of Hustler's Reef, Bendigo, getting large dividends from a depth of 750 ft. This, too, is one of the very reefs alluded to by the commissioners as non-remunerative below 60ft. But the vein of gold was only temporarily lost, and, by sinking deeper, the proprietors of the claim have found the quartz, if not as rich as at the surface, sufficiently so to give great yields. The error of the Professor and his colleagues, and one which Sir R Murchison carefully guarded,himself against, was in assigning a limit to the operations of the miner. It may be true that even in Australia the lodes will not be found to pay below a certain point, but no one can indicate it. We know by experience that the boundary lino cannot bo drawn at 750 ft., and we question whether even Professor M'Coy would now venture to define it at 1000 or even 2000 feet. At the same time, we do not admire the flippant references of Mr Carpenter to a

man superior in every sense of the word to himself but in knowledge of practical mining. The fact that our quartz lodes may yield large returns at a depth of 750~ft., if not at more than double that distance from the surface, should stimulate mining in Daylesford and on every goldfield. In this district at least the "deepest of our quartz shafts has hardly penetrated the rock more than half the distance of the' rich mines at Bendigo.