Abstract
Placer deposits provided early man with the first samples of gold and thereafter have accounted for a large production of the metal. If we include the Witwatersrand and other quartz-pebble conglomerates as fossil placers or modified placers, the placer type of auriferous deposit has provided more than two thirds of the world’s store of gold, about 80 × 109 grams (2.6 × 109 oz).
But gold which is formed in sands, as a kind of grains, larger or smaller, is formed from a hot and very subtle vapour, concentrated and digested in the midst of the sandy material, and afterwards hardened into gold. Albertus Magnus, 1260
The large nuggets found in the drift are simply the reliquiae of the chief masses of gold which once occupied the uppermost parts of the reefs, and that like the blocks of many an ancient conglomerate, they have been swept from the hilltops into adjacent valleys by former great rushes of water. Murchison, 1872
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© 1987 Van Nostrand Reinhold
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Tyrrell, J.B. et al. (1987). Gold Deposits—Placers. In: Gold. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1969-6_16
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