anite containing muscovite (white
mica), which so many people will persist in terming talc. It is stated
to be a fact that tin has never been found more than about two miles
from such granite.

From what has been said of its widely divergent occurrences it will be
admitted that the Cornish miners' saying with regard to metals generally
applies with great force to gold: "Where it is, there it is": and
"Cousin Jack" adds, with pathetic emphasis, "and where it is generally,
there I ain't."

I have already spoken of the geological "country rock" in which red gold
is most likely to be discovered--i.e., the junction of the slates and
schists with the igneous or metamorphic (altered) rocks, or in
this vicinity. Old river beds formed of gravelly drifts in the same
neighbourhood may probably contain alluvial gold, or shallow deposits of
"wash" on hillsides and in valleys will often carry good surface gold.
This is sometimes due to the denudation, or wearing away, of the hills
containing quartz-veins--that is, where the alluvial gold really was
derived from such veins, which, popular opinion to the contrary, is not
always the case.

Much disappointment and loss of time and money may sometimes be
prevented if prospectors will realise that _all_ alluvial gold does not
come from the quartz veins or reefs; and that following up an alluvial
lead, no matter how rich, will not inevitably develop a payable
gold lode. Sometimes gold, evidently of reef origin, is found in the
alluvial; but in that case it is generally fine as regards the size
of the particles, more or less sharp-edged, or crystalline in form if
recently shed; while such gold is often of poorer quality than the true
alluvial which occurs in mammillary (breast-like) nuggets, and is of a
higher degree of purity as gold.

The ordinary non-scientific digger will do well to give credence to
this view of the case, and will often thereby save himself much useless
trouble. Sometimes also the alluvial gold, coarser in size than true
reef-born alluvial, is derived almost _in situ_ from small quartz
"leaders," or veins, which the grinding down of the face of the slates
has exposed; these leaders in time being also broken and worn, set free
the gold they have contained, which does not, as a rule, travel far, but
sometimes becomes water-worn by the rubbing over it of the disintegrated
fragments of rock.

But the heavy, true alluvial gold, in great pure masses, mammillary, or
botr