A correspondence relating to the discovery of gold in Australia.

  • Earl, George Windsor.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A correspondence relating to the discovery of gold in Australia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    (J op])osition to my conclusions had been based.* “ In instituting a “ comparison between tbe species collected from the Australian “ deposits, and those described from the Burdwan coal-field by “ Professor Royle, we observe both the remarkable analogy of form “ of some species, and the actual identity of others; from which “ we may probably be led to infer that the deposition of the strata “ containing them was not only contemporaneous, but that the “ conditions of the flora of some portions of the Indian and “ Australian continents, at that epoch, were not very dissimilar.” — (Physical Description of New South Wales, p. 253.) But your Lordship may imagine my surprise when I read the following paragraph in Mr. James VVyld’s recently published “ Notes on the Distribution of Gold throughout the World,” the production of a member of the Royal Geographical Society, and dedicated to Sir R. I. Murchison as President. < “ The likeness of the New Holland formations to those of the “ Ural has long been remarked; and Sir Roderick Murchison “ was so strongly impressed with the fact that he felt it his duty “ to give prominence to it, in the address which he delivered to “ the Royal Geographical Society, as President, in May 1845. “ Ho alluded particularly to the discovery of gold near Bathurst, “ in the western flank of what he styled the great Australian “ Cordillera; and he strongly urged the propriety of a strict “ geological investigation, with the view- of establishing gold “ workings. Colonel Helmerson, of St. Petersburg, a member “ of the Russian Academy of Sciences, well acquainted with the “ Ural gold works, expressed the same opinion. These views * The terms used by Mr. Murchison were identical, or nearly so, wdth the following extract from the Anniversary Address he had delivered a few days before. The allusion is to Professor Owen’s Report on Extinct Mammals of Australia, which had been read at the preceding meeting of the British Association :—“ But when we cast our eyes to Australia on “ the one hand, or to South America on the other, then is the fauna as “ entirely dissimilar in each, as we should expect to find it in countries “ partitioned off by such wide seas and great natural barriers. From “ observing the fact, that the fossil mammalian remains of these two conti- “ nents are as unlike those of Europe, Asia, and Africa, as their present “ quadrupeds, Professor Owen rightly concludes ‘ that the same forms “ were restricted to the same provinces at a former geological period as “ they are at the present day;’ and thus he sustains the views of modern “ geologists, that in those periods immediately anterior to our own, the “ great geographical features of the earth must have been the same as “ those which now prevail.”—Address to the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, '20th May, IS 15, l>y Roderick Impey Murchison, V.P.R.S. (f G.S. $c. Ifc. President, p. 75.