been chiefly red oxides, very rich blue and green carbonates, including
malachite, and also native copper. The discovery of this mine,
supporting, as it did at one time, a large population, marked a new
era in the history of the colony. The capital invested in it was 12,320
pounds in 5 pound shares, and no subsequent call was ever made upon the
shareholders. The total amount paid in dividends was 800,000 pounds.
After being worked by the original owners for some years the mine was
sold to a new company, but during the last few years it has not been
worked, owing in some degree to the low price of copper and also to the
fact that the deposit then being worked apparently became exhausted.
For many years the average yield was from 10,000 to 13,000 tons of ore,
averaging 22 to 23 per cent of copper. It is stated that, during the
twenty-nine and a half years in which the mine was worked, the company
expended 2,241,167 in general expenses. The output of ore during the
same period amounted to 234,648 tons, equal to 51,622 tons of copper.
This, at the average price of copper, amounted to a money value of
4,749,224 pounds. The mine stopped working in 1877.

Mount Bischoff, Tasmania, has produced, since the formation of the
Company to December 1895, 47,263 tons of tin ore. It is still in full
work and likely to be for years to come.

Each of these immense metalliferous deposits was found outcropping on
the summit of a hill of comparatively low altitude. There are no true
walls nor can the ore be traced away from the hill in lode form. These
occurrences are generally held to be due to hydrothermal or geyser
action.

Then again lodes are often very erratic in their course. Slides and
faults throw them far from their true line, and sometimes the lode is