ABSTRACT
Gold is never met with in regular veins, but in primitive or igneous rocks, or in deposits formed by the disintegration of these. In Australia the metal is associated with quartz, in slate rocks geologically equivalent to the Cambrian-formations of England and Wales; and in California it is also chiefly found in material which has been formed by the wearing down of quartz and granite rocks. The fundamental rocks in the colony of Victoria belong to the oldest series of strata. They answer to the Silurian formation which exists in Cumberland, Wales, and Scotland. Although the strata of the rocks are much bent, and they have been worn down by the action of water, they are as a whole but little altered, consisting chiefly of sandstones and shales. The “blue ground” was at first supposed to be the original home of the diamond, within which it had somehow taken its shape.
