3i6 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



I. — The Waste of Thought. 



It is difficult to follow the waste of thought into its inmost 

 recesses, but a moment's consideration shows how far-reaching such 

 waste is. I do not mean by waste of thought errors of judgment. 

 These last erect for themselves monuments visible to all the world. 

 I mean by waste of thought that habit of mind which tries to shut 

 itself up from the influence of others and laboriously restates a pro- 

 blem and then equally laboriously attempts to solve it, when a little 

 more knowledge would have enabled the worker to find the problem 

 satisfactorily solved by some one else without any waste of thought 

 on his part. 



Modern Mining, in which comparatively so few of the methods 

 have crystallized into hard and fast lines, offers a particularly good 

 field for illustrations of this kind of waste. Definitions of a mine 

 have varied all the way from that of the disappointed speculator, who 

 declared that a mine was a hole in the ground owned by a liar, to that 

 of the geologist who stated that a mine was an excavation in the 

 earth so designed as to permit of the extraction of minerals. For our 

 purposes we must add the business man's conception of mining to 

 that of the geologist, and introduce the idea that mining is a com- 

 mercial pursuit designed to yield a profit on the working. This 

 conception of mining cannot be too much emphasized, for it is pre- 

 cisely in order to achieve this point of making mining profitable that 

 wastes of all kinds must be eliminated. 



I know very well that this commercial aspect of the question is 

 not the only, nor is it the greatest, attraction of mining. There is a 

 glamour about Ithe pursuit, especially the mining for precious 

 metals and precious stones, which lures men on, when their business 

 instinct tells them that they have gone far enough, but the commercial 

 aspect of mining is the solid foundation which permits of this business 

 being carried on, and continually expanded, and this aspect should 

 therefore be greatly emphasized. 



When men began to analyse the process of mining minerals from 

 the earth, the great cost of preparing the excavations necessary for 

 the purpose probably first impressed them. Some means were sought 

 by which this cost could be reduced. Very soon there probably arose 

 some man with the suggestion to do away with the excavations alto- 

 gether ; his argument probably being that the only necessity for large 

 excavations was to enable men to get to the places where the ore was ; 

 that it would be much simpler to get some solvent that would selec- 

 tively dissolve the desired material from the surrounding waste, and 

 the enriched solution could be pumped to the surface and there 

 treated so as to separate the solvent from the dissolved commodity 

 sought for. This idea proves wonderfully attractive to some men ; all 

 the more so because in certain cases it has been successful. Many 

 salt mines are worked on this principle ; some copper mines under 

 very special circumstances have used this idea, the solvent in these 

 cases being water. I have also heard of one silver mine worked on 

 this scheme, the solvent being hyposulphite of soda. 



