A TREATISE ON THE LAW OF GOLD-MINING IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND SECOND EDITION. BY HENRY J. ARMSTRONG, SOLICITOR. CHARLES F. Melbourne: MAXWELL (G. PARTRIDGE & CO.), LAW BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS, 458 CHANCERY LANE. LONDON SWEET & MAXWELL, LIMITED. 1901. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE first edition of this Work having been exhausted, and in view of the alteration of the law by the introduction of the Mines Act 1897, and the decisions of the Supreme Court in mining cases during the last ten years, a demand has arisen for a second edition, in order to bring the Work up to the present date. To make the volume more complete and comprehensive, references have been introduced and numerous cases quoted throughout the text bearing on the law of gold-mining in the other States of Australia and in New Zealand, as well as references to the Acts of those States; and in addition, the Victorian Acts appearing in the Appendix have been carefully annotated to facilitate comparison with the various Mining Acts now in force throughout the States. Whilst retaining the original plan of the first edition, it has been found necessary to re-construct and re-write the whole of the Work, which, in its present form, though dealing principally with the law of gold-mining in Victoria, may be regarded as illustrating the mining law of the whole of Australasia. Kyneton, Vic., 1901. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. WITH the exception of Atkins's Notes to the Mining Statute and McFarland's admirable Digest, no work devoted entirely to the Law of Mining in Victoria has been published; and as, since the last publication of the Digest. in 1881, various changes have taken place in the statute law, and numerous judgmnts have been delivered expounding that law, it is considered that this work will be found useful to the members of the profession as well as to others holding or acquiring mining interests. A work of this nature, though the result of the study and practice of a number of years, must necessarily be imperfect in many respects. When consideration is given to the fact that the whole of our mining law is founded on statutes for which no precedent existed in any other country; that such statutes were made and repealed from time to time as occasion required; that judgments on the construction of an Act since repealed do not necessarily apply to an existing Act; that many of the judgments are based on the constructions of by-laws, which have been successively amended or repealed; and that the author's task was not only to reconcile as far as possible the numerous decisions upon which the construction of our mining law is based, but to weave together into one strand the various sources from which such law is derived—to compare the many statutes, by-laws and regulations which form the mining code of the colony-and to eliminate |