hing only 12 lbs.
is competent for the construction of the famous 'Welcome Nugget,' an
Australian find having weight equal to 152 lbs. avoirdupois. Such masses
of pyrites are by no means uncommon in our drifts or the beds of our
mountain streams. Thus we find that no straining of the imagination is
required to conceive of this mode of formation for the huge masses of
gold found in Australia in particular, such as the Welcome Nugget,
184 lbs. 9 oz.; the Welcome Stranger, a surface nugget, 190 lbs. after
smelting; the Braidwood specimen nugget, 350 lbs., two-thirds gold;
besides many other large masses of almost virgin gold which have been
obtained from time to time in the alluvial diggings."

The author has made a number of experiments in the same direction, but
more with the idea of demonstrating how possibly gold may in certain
cases have been deposited in siliceous formations after such formations
had solidified. Some of the results were remarkable and indeed
unexpected. I found that I could produce artificial specimens of
auriferous quartz from stone which had previously contained no gold
whatever, also that it was not absolutely necessary that the stone so
treated should contain any metallic sulphides.

The following was contributed by the author and is from the
"Transactions" of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers for
1893:--

"THE DEPOSITION OF GOLD.

"The question as to how gold was originally deposited in our auriferous
lodes is one to which a large amount of attention has been given, both
by mineralogists and practical miners, and which has been hotly argued
by those who held the igneous theory and those who pronounced for the
aqueous theory. It was held by the former that as gold was not probably
existent in nature in any but its metallic form, therefore it had been
deposited in its siliceous matrix while in a molten state, and many
ingenious arguments were adduced in support of this contention. Of late,
however, most scientific men, and indeed many purely empirical inquirers
(using the word empirical in its strict sense) have come to the
conclusion that though the mode in which they were composed was not
always identical, all lodes, including auriferous formations, were
primarily derived from mineral-impregnated waters which deposited their
contents in fissures caused either by the cooling of the earth's crust
or by volcanic agency.

"The subject is one which has long had a special attraction