DURING several years of more or less close acquaintance, as mine manager and consulting engineer, with many Australian tin fields, the writer has collected and collated information that was intended as a basis for an ultimately fairly comprehensive paper on Australian tin lodes and mills. Many additional personal inspections were contemplated by him before rushing into print, but a recent change of occupation has robbed him of the necessary time and opportunities. All he has to furnish now are scattered notes taken here and there. These, supplemented with information kindly supplied by a number of brother engineers and managers, and by the literature available, he has endeavoured to arrange as systematically as their nature permits. To anticipate fair comment, he acknowledges that his descriptions of lodes include but a few fragments of the numerous fields, and omit many fairly important ones ; but, in his opinion, first-hand descriptions of mines, lodes, and mills taken while work is in progress are permanently useful, whether results are commercially profitable or otherwise. Particulars are seldom to be obtained after operations cease: and the engineer investigating new things for his clients is always better safeguarded if he knows typical failures as well as typical successes. Any reader Starting to digest this paper had better be prepared to be served with fragments, and be thankful if he finds, as he proceeds, anything resembling an occasional course or fair portion thereof: