Mineral Veins.

The interlaminations of quartz forming regular layers in the micaceous schists and phyllites, as well as the smaller aggregations, or strings of quartz, occurring in great variety and under different conditions, are to a certain degree auriferous, but they appear to be so very poor that only under a combination of most favourable circum-page 265stances, payable goldfields have been formed by their disintegration. In this province, no payable goldfield has been opened up amongst the rocks of this formation, and in Otago, according to Captain Hutton, only the Naseby Goldfields have exclusively been derived from it—(Geology of Otago, page 34). I only know of three reefs occurring in this formation on the eastern slopes of the Southern Alps, which might be termed regular lodes, but their unauriferous character has either been proved on closer examination, or they have not yet been tested. One of these reefs is situated in the small range between the two main Waihao branches. It consists of a yellowish, somewhat ferrugineous quartz, and appears to be several feet thick, but it is much covered up, so that it is impossible, without clearing it, to obtain further details. Another is situated on the southern banks of the Kakahu river; it is about three feet broad, strikes south-west and north-east, and consists of a flinty quartz. An assay, made of stone taken from this reef, did not give the least trace of gold, and it is therefore evident that the wash-gold found in small quantities in the banks of the Kakahu river, is derived from the interlaminated quartz; just as in the Upper Waihao, where regular quartz reefs are entirely absent. Another reef of considerable thickness, near McQueen's Pass in Banks' Peninsula, has also proved to be unauriferous. In the Makaroa valley, the "colour," to use a miner's term, can be obtained everywhere in the alluvial deposits, but nowhere has ground been discovered in that district, derived from the rocks belonging to the Waihao formation, sufficiently rich to pay working expenses. Of other ores, nothing of value has as yet been discovered in this formation. Some of the micaceous schists., as for instance near the head of the Makaroa, are full of iron pyrites. In others, the grains, or interlaminations of quartz, contain small nests or concretions of mispickel, as for instance in the River Hopkins.