SIR R. I. MURCHISON AND WEST AUSTRALIA.
TO THE EDITOR
SIR,—From time to time references have been made by correspondents to your paper with regard to remarks and predictions said to have been made by Sir Roderick Impey Murchison on the probability of gold being found in this colony, so thinking that it might interest some of your readers to know the exact truth on this question, I applied to Mr. Bernard B. Woodward, F.G.S., the Librarian who has the custody of the Natural History Books of the British Museum, and who says :
—“I have been through all Murchison's addresses to the Geographical Society, and consulted Geiki's 'Life of Murchison' and other books innumerable, and cannot find that he gave any opinion in favour of the prospect of finding gold in Western Australia.
Murchison, of course, never in his life was anywhere near the Australian colonies.” In his Presidential address to the Royal Geographical Society, in May, 1844 (Journ. R.G.S., XIV., pp. xcix.-c), Sir R. I. Murchison, after pointing out the similarity of the rocks forming the great chain running down the Eastern side of Australia and entering into Van Dieman’s Land to those of the Ural mountains, remarks :—
“But it (the Australian chain) differs from the Ural and many other Meridian chains in having as yet offered no trace of gold or auriferous veins.” Again, in 1864, when Mr. E. C. Hargreaves read a paper on “The Non-Auriferous Character of the Rocks of Western Australia,” before the Royal Geographical Society (Proc. R.G.S. Vol. VIII., 1864, page 32), Sir R I Murchison, President in the chair : “The President, in expressing the customary vote of thanks to the author for the paper, said Mr. Hargreaves was the first practical explorer of gold mines in Australia. He had been sent out by Government to if Western Australia would prove auriferous. He had stated what certainly was a fact, that he (Sir R. I. M.) never had the remotest idea of suggesting that Western Australia would prove auriferous, on the contrary he knew very well that from what had been previously said of the structure of those rocks, and from the fossils and organic remains which had been brought before them by Mr. Frank Gregory, who had explored the country, that there were none of those ancient slatey rocks in the regions examined, with quartz veins in them in which gold could be discovered.”
From the first quotation it will be seen that Sir R. I. Murchison merely pointed out the similarity of the rocks in Eastern Australia to certain gold bearing rocks of other parts of the world ; while in the second he speaks positively against the probability of gold being found in this colony.
I am, &c.,
BERNARD H. WOODWARD.
The Geological Museum, Jan. 2nd.
IN another column we publish a short letter from the Reverend C. G. Nicolay, bearing out the interesting statements contributed by Mr. B. H. Woodward to our issue of the 6th inst. respecting Sir Roderick Murchison’s alleged prediction that gold would be found in Western Australia.
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