612 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



mathematics, geometry, etc., are all called into requisition ; so 

 that it is often difficult to say where art ends and science begins. 

 We are not indeed far wrong in saying that art is simply an 

 applied science — science in action, so to speak ; and this marks 

 the passing of theory into practice. 



Mining is one of the oldest of the arts, as astrology was 

 one of the oldest of the sciences. It was for long of a very 

 crude character. But, with accumulated experience, came also a 

 knowledge of general principles, and these also accumulating, 

 in the course of time furnish the abstract principles upon which 

 scientific mining is based, and with which the success of any 

 mining enterprise is indissolubly bound up. It needs but to 

 ask ourselves what would be our position to-day were we to 

 turn to the old rule-of-thumb methods instead of those based 

 upon science, in order to realise how much of our success is due 

 to the latter, and at the same time how much of our failure is due 

 to the want of it. 



We may briefly define mining as the art of transforming the 

 potential wealth of the earth's crust into real wealth. As part of that 

 real wealth we may even include science itself. For it is by 

 investigation into the phenomena of nature that science is 

 advanced ; and this investigation could never have taken place 

 to the extent it has done, had it not been for that exploration 

 into the body of the earth which is the special province of 

 mining. Radium, for instance — that latest of scientific wonders — 

 it is questionable indeed whether it would ever have been heard 

 of, had not mining given us the metal uranium. And if we 

 turn from a special instance of this kind to science itself; if, for 

 instance, we take geology, that complementary science, so to 

 speak, of mining, and ask ourselves what it would have been 

 without the miner's experience in the body of the earth, it 

 is akin to asking what physiology would have been without 

 anatomy. We may say the same of the other sciences in 

 varying degrees ; for, besides the direct benefit derived from the 

 extraction of coal, iron-stone, precious metals, and minerals of 

 all kinds, there is the even more important indirect benefit 

 derived from the investigation into the properties of these 

 various substances. 



The intrinsic value of the substance brought to the surface 

 may be great, or it may be small, but its value as a factor in 

 physical research may be immeasurable. The net result to 



