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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

II.—What has Science to say on the Subject?

II.—What has Science to say on the Subject?

And here I might detain you for hours without exhausting my materials, though I might exhaust your patience. I can only deal with outlines in the short time at my disposal.

A. As to the occurrence of lodes, whether by chemical means, at ingeniously suggested by my good friend Professor Black, or a combination of that with other causes, I shall not now attempt to inquire. This is a subject by itself, and a very interesting one, and I do not despair of a workable theory being established. I start with the fact that such lodes do exist all through the quartzose schist rocks, which are among the oldest and most common formations in the country, and that these lodes have been the original sources of supply to our alluvial goldfields.

B. I come then to my main inquiry this evening—"How have these rocks been disintegrated and the gold in them distributed over so wide an area?" And I unhesitatingly answer—(1) By glacial action (2) By the action of water. I referred at the outset to the "glacial theory." When I first adopted it I had read only a few British authorities, and nothing of what has been written on the subject in .New Zealand. Your late lamented fellow-townsmen, Mr. J. T. Thomson, and Mr. L. O. Beal, were among the first who adopted it. Since then much has been written by Yon Haast, by Hutton, by Hector, by M'Kerrow, and others; and, though they differ in details as to the locality and extent of the ancient glaciers, and as to their duration, and their relation to the geological periods, in the main all agree that in post ages, subsequent to the Middle Tertiary Period, the glaciers—of which we have many existing examples in our alpine ranges—have extended far below their present altitudes, and for at least a hundred miles nearer the eastern coast-line, with some out-liers still further eastward. It is an accepted theory that the same state of things has occurred all over the British Isles, over Europe, in North and South America, and—for aught I know—at one period or another, all over the world, Miss Buckley, who held the position of Secretary to Sir Charles Lyell (page 433), in an admirable little work called "A Short History of Natural Science," gives this account of the theory, which she attributes in the first instance to Professor Agassiz, who first began to entertain it about 1840:—