550,000,000 pounds. One cannot help wondering where it all goes.

Mulhall gives the existing money of the world at 2437 million pounds,
of which 846 millions are paper, 801 millions silver, and 790 millions
gold. From 1830 to 1880 the world consumed by melting down plate, etc.,
4230 tons of silver more than it mined. From 1800 to 1870 the value of
gold was about 15 1/2 times that of silver. From 1870 to 1880 it was 167
times the value of silver and now exceeds it over twenty times. In 1700
the world had 301 million pounds of money; in 1800, 568 million pounds;
and in 1860, 1180 million pounds sterling.

The gold first worked for in Australia, as in other places, was of
course alluvial, by which is usually understood loose gold in nuggets,
specks, and dust, lying in drifts which were once the beds of long
extinct streams and rivers, or possibly the moraines of glaciers, as in
New Zealand.

Further on the differences will be mentioned between "alluvial" and
"reef" or lode gold, for that there is a difference in origin in many
occurrences, is, I think, provable. I hold, and hold strongly, that true
alluvial gold is not always derived from the disintegration of lodes or
reefs. For instance, the "Welcome Nugget" certainly never came from a
reef. No such mass of gold, or anything approaching it, has ever yet
been taken from a quartz matrix. It was found at Bakery Hill, Ballarat,
in 1858, weight 2195 ozs., and sold for 10,500 pounds. This was above
its actual value.

The "Welcome Stranger," a still larger mass of gold, was found amongst
the roots of a tree at Dunolly, Victoria, in 1869, by two starved out
"fossickers" named Deeson and Oates. The weight of this, the largest