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been fitted up in the General Post Office, with telegraphic instruments, in order that the clerks on the premises may learn to work them; and "dummy" instruments for the use of learners have been sent to the post offices in the provinces. The apparatus for common use will be the Morse printing telegraph and the single needle instrument; a wise selection, for long experience has proved them to be the best to place in the hands of unscientific clerks. They are not very liable to get out of order, and are very certain in their indications.

The following are among the changes that will be gradually made, some of them, however, at so distant a date that even the preliminaries have not been arranged as yet. The nine large district post offices in London will be made central stations, and each one will be connected by wire with the subordinate offices in its district. The chief post office in each of the largest provincial towns will be made a central telegraphic station, and the chief provincial towns will be placed in direct communication with three of the largest central London offices, namely, those in the West Central, Western, and South-western districts, in addition to the chief office in the East Central district. Suborbinate offices will be opened throughout the kingdom at the money-order offices in all places having a population of 2,000 persons and upwards. Messages will be received at all post offices for transmission by hand in the ordinary way to stations in connection with the telegraphic lines; pillar boxes will be places of deposit for messages written on stamped paper; and, as a rule, all messages will have to be paid for in stamps. The charge for transmission of a message of twenty words from any one part of the United Kingdom to any other part will be one shilling; but when it has to be delivered at a considerable distance from the nearest terminal station, it will be forwarded from that station by post for a penny, or by special messenger at sixpence per mile. Facilities will be given for the transmission of money-orders by telegraph, and as soon as possible the charges for messages to foreign parts will be reduced. Such are the plans which will be carried out, some of which will be in a very forward state in a few weeks' time.

ALTHOUGH large quantities of gold are obtained from the detrital accumulations which overlie the palaeozoic rocks of Victoria, there can be no doubt that they have come originally from the decomposition and removal of the auriferous quartz veins by which these rocks are traversed. The gold is simply a part of the detritus, in the same way that the fragments of quartz, sandstone, and slate are. Each nugget and bit of gold is only a more or less water-worn pebble, its edges being, as a rule, less worn, and its size larger, the nearer it is found to its parent reef. Yet some writers have endeavoured to show that the nuggets really grow by a kind of accretion, each fragment of gold becoming larger by successive depositions of the metal held in solution in the water percolating through the gravels. Mr. Brough Smyth, in discussing these and other disputed questions, usually avoids the expression of any decided opinion of his own. He treats them very much as a judge treats the evidence at a trial, and he leaves the decision to the jurymen, his readers. Yet we can very commonly guess what his opinions are, though he may not expressly state them. He gives us a tolerably copious account of opinions which have been published relative to the origin of quartz veins, and among these a valuable series of notes and sections specially made for him by a mining engineer of repute in the colony. The whole of this subject is, he says, involved in obscurity; "and though it is not possible for any one who has given attention to it to attach equal weight to the several theories which have been proposed, he would do wrong rashly to dismiss any of them as altogether improbable." Perhaps a judicial summing-up of this kind was, in the circumstances, better than the keen advocacy of any one theory. What is of value to the engineer in the colony is, to know what has really been written about the veins; and this he can learn with ease and satisfaction from Mr. Smyth's pages.

Allusion was made, in the previous notice of this volume, to the excellence of the geological and mining sections. It is rare to meet with such sections, so clearly conceived, so tastefully drawn, and carrying with them such conviction of their truth. The plate illustrative of the Ballarat gold fields is quite a model of clearness and clever drawing. No colour is used, but the various rocks are sharply defined, while, by the kind of drawing given to each, the internal structure of the mass is felicitously rendered. In the way of illustrations, the book seems to have only one failing, but it is a serious one: there is no geological map of the colony. The map at the end does not supply the want. A little coloured sketch-map, giving a general outline of the distribution of the geological formations, would have been an invaluable addition to the book, and would have certainly been worth a whole chapter of description.

One of the most striking facts brought out by the data compiled by Mr. Smyth is the high geological antiquity of the present land-surface of Victoria, or, in other words, the immense period during which that surface has remained above the sea. The palaeozoic strata form the framework out of which the contour of the land has been moulded. These strata have been curved and folded, thrown on end, inverted, fractured, and upheaved. But the surface outlines are not found to bear any close relation to the direction of the subterranean movements. "There is scarcely one range in the colony which is not due to denudation, and those following lines of upheaval have been so modified by the action of water, through countless ages, as to make it difficult to determine where and how the elevating forces have operated." The palaeozoic rocks were carved out into systems of valleys by the descent of rain-water from the watersheds to the lower grounds. Along these valleys river-gravels were laid down. In later times many volcanoes broke out, and thick streams of basalt rolled into the valleys and buried the ancient river-courses. Thus, in many places, the surface and the drainage of wide areas were wholly changed. New streams began to flow and to excavate new channels, which often flowed across the trend of the older valleys lying buried beneath them. By degrees these later valleys sank deeper into the frame-