the surface soil is auriferous? Is there any reason to believe that gold dust has accidentally fallen into the well and become mixed with the debris there? These questions would be answered by a not very laborious investigation.

Wherever we meet with silurian (or older) rocks intersected by veins of quartz, we may look with confidence for the discovery of metalliferous and mineral veins of more or less importance. It appears that we have all the conditions in the Province of Wellington. If I were to submit many of the rocks collected by Mr. Crawford to any gold miner in Victoria, he would recognise them at once as precisely similar to those occurring on some of the Victorian gold fields: and while a few specimens of the milky and ferruginous quartz are quite like our own, the chalcedonic quartz exactly resembles that found in the Northern gold fields of New South Wales. Without attaching too much importance to these resemblances (for quartz veins are not always auriferous) they yet serve to show the necessity for earnest and careful exploration of the country.

Looking to the physical geography of the North Island of New Zealand, one observes a main chain of mountains, running generally in a Northerly direction with Easterly and Westerly spurs of considerable extent. The position of this main chain (broken as the other lands may be) has determined the course of the principal river basins, the more important of which lie on the West side of the main range. If a geological map were constructed of this country it would not probably differ, in its main features, from many parts of Eastern Australia. We should find, I apprehend, the central axis composed of rocks of the primary age, with masses of intrusive granite, and many of the spurs of basalts and lavas of different ages. We should also find areas occupied by carboniferous rocks, and large tracts covered by tertiaries of greater or lesser thickness.

Though the information I have received is not very complete, it would appear that on the Eastern sea board rather thick tertiaries prevail (probably of the same age as the Murray tertiaries) and I would therefore recommend that the rivers flowing to the Westward should be first explored. There, I am led to believe, the quite recent accumulations of drift, similar to these occurring on our Victorian gold fields, are prevalent, and no very costly examinations would be required to ascertain whether or not these recent accumulations contain gold, or tin ore, or the ores of other metals, in remunerative quantities.

There is no reason to believe that gold is more likely to occur on the Western side of the main chain than on the Eastern. But it is probable, owing to the local distribution of the rocks, that it will be found more easily on the Western side. The rivers in Victoria on the Eastern side are all auriferous. I would suggest as particularly worthy of immediate attention the basins of the Hutt, the Waikanae, the Otaki, the Manawatu, the Rangitikei, and the Whanganui.

Unless careful attention be directed to the conditions under which gold occurs, a long period may elapse before any important discoveries are made in this part of New Zealand. Looking alone to the modes of occurrence of gold in Victoria, people in other countries may utterly neglect the most important localities, because the conditions there are not the same as here. In Victoria we find the silurian and metamorphic rocks everywhere intersected by veins of quartz, varying in thickness from a line to fifty feet. These quartz veins, nowhere, it is believed, penetrate the great masses of plutonic rocks which everywhere have broken through the sedimentary strata. They stop short at the granite boundaries, and the gold miner, accordingly, as a general rule, neglects the granite country. This peculiarity is due probably to the relative ages of the granites and the sedimentary rocks. The force which rent asunder and left wide fissures in the clay slate and schist formation was perhaps exerted before the granites came to occupy their present place, or perhaps the force was insufficient, or exerted so as not to affect the denser, tougher and harder plutonic rocks. It is a local peculiarity, not a condition universally occurring. Elsewhere gold is found in granite, in gneiss, in mica schist, in syenitic porphyry, in green stone, as well as in quartz veins intersecting rocks of the silurian age.

It may be looked for, and yet may be profitably worked in conglomerates much older than tertiaries. Gold is found in quite modern drifts overlying granite rocks—not derived from auriferous quartz veins penetrating the granite but from veins in slate rocks which have wholly disappeared. The slate rocks have been denuded and their rich stores of gold have been left in holes and "pockets" of the granite, the bed on which the slate rocks were originally reposing. A granite country therefore (more especially if in the neighbourhood of schists) should not be neglected, but