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And, in regard to gold, the case is stronger. Constantly brilliant in its natural aspect, occurring in many river beds, easily fusible, remarkably ductile, and exempt from rust, it was known and valued from the earliest ages, and was probably the very first of all metals tried in the fire and moulded by the hammer. Gold has been gathered in every quarter of the globe, in every age known to history and tradition. Scythia and India—the Tagus and the Po—the Hebrus, the Pactolus, and the Ganges—gave their gold to Rome, as they had given to earlier masters. Yet not all this immense experience, sharpened by the "auri sacra fames," produced philosophical views of those co-ordinate phenomena by which the presence of gold could be predicated in new situations. It was simply a matter of trial and error. At last it came under the domain of geology, and was treated as a geological problem. The usual consequence followed—experience became science, and further discoveries were anticipated by theory.

For not only were observations having the character of scientific generalization published many years before the late discoveries, but public attention was distinctly called to their practical application, and a certain country was definitely indicated as likely to be highly productive of gold, and worthy to be explored for that metal. This was done by Sir Roderick Murchison—one who might well be excused, by the variety and importance of his explorations, if he had left wholly to others the care of pointing out the economical application of them.

But, after surveying the Ural, and publishing, in 1844, his critical observations on the old mines of that "hyperborean" district, he took several occasions publicly to declare the general views to which they had conducted him; made a special comparison of the Ural with the eastern chain of Australia (1844); invited the Cornish miners to emigrate to New South Wales and dig for gold on the flanks of the "Australian Cordillera,"