606 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Steam Turbine was ably handled by Mr. Stoney, and its " pros " 

 and "cons" subsequently discussed under the searchlight of 

 science. So too the merits, demerits, and future possibilities of 

 gas-engines were taken up, laid down, and no doubt advanced 

 a step. In other branches also of engineering there has been 

 evinced a disposition to acknowledge, and to profit by, the 

 methods of science. 



While, however, there is evinced this confraternity of interest 

 between engineering and science, there is one important branch 

 of our industrial life which is practically unrepresented. I refer 

 to that of mining. There is not, throughout the whole list of 

 industrial enterprises for which we are world-famed, and upon 

 which our national greatness so largely depends, an undertaking 

 of greater importance than that of turning the raw material of 

 the earth's crust into the wealth which ministers to the wants 

 of man. It requires no laboured argument to show — it cannot 

 indeed be gainsaid — that it is upon our coal that the superstruc- 

 ture of our industrial life depends. Add to this the exploitation 

 also of other minerals, and the importance of the operation of 

 mining needs no further comment. And yet it is the fact that it 

 is only within recent years that this importance has begun to 

 have due weight attached to it, and is becoming a matter of more 

 general interest. It is with a view to furthering this general 

 interest, and emphasising the importance attaching to it, that 

 these pages are contributed. 



Mining is one of those industries (if industry we may call it) 

 which, rooted and grounded in practical experience, has all 

 along been loath to part with the past and adapt itself to an 

 ever-changing environment. It has not readily assimilated the 

 advantages placed before it. It is essentially conservative, and 

 its evolution has consequently been slow. This probably is 

 natural enough when we consider its essentially practical char- 

 acter, and the reasonable apprehension, on the part of those 

 who provide the necessarily large amount of capital involved, 

 lest any radical change should prove disastrous. It is this 

 wariness, this circumspection (natural up to a certain point) 

 combined with a certain instinctive attraction for the old and 

 indifference to the new, that has caused mining to stand, as it 

 were, so much in its own light. But the spirit of change, and a 

 new environment, have at last proved equal to the occasion ; 

 and modern thought and modern ideas have now gained a 



