336 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



of other arts. We do not assume, lor example, that the principles 

 of mechanics applied to structures were not understood because there 

 were no written treatises on architecture until centuries after many- 

 periods of architecture had successively developed and declined. 



Scant as is the literature of mineralogy and mining up to the early 

 part of the Christian era, the succeeding 10 or 12 centuries are almost 

 entirely without records. This was the medieval period of intellec- 

 tual stagnation — the eclipse of scientific and critical thought. The 

 Arabs, who alone preserved the traditions of antiquity durmg this 

 lapse, made considerable contributions to scientific knowledge, not 

 neglecting mineralogy. Aside from this, there are only a few minor 

 references to the subject in the chronicles of that time. 



While science was neglected in the Middle Ages, the arts con- 

 tinued to progress, and among these mining was important. It 

 is recorded that in Charlemagne's time thousands of miners were 

 employed in the metal industry of northern Tyrol, and many other 

 countries made notable contributions to the metallic wealth of the 

 world. Coal mining began in England and Germany in the twehth 

 century. In fact, the mining industry assumed an importance 

 which attests a high degree of administrative and technical skill. 



With the revival of learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries, scholars began again to turn their attention to the 

 natural sciences. At first they labored solely to verify and amplify 

 the theories of the ancient writers, never doubting that the classical 

 philosophers had encompassed the entire realm of human thought. 

 Generations of scholars sought their science in the Greek and Roman 

 literature. But with the Renaissance scholastic thought was freed, 

 and then the first epoch of scientific geology began. 



The wide chasm which separated the academician from the 

 technician at that time prevented any utilization of the great 

 store of geologic facts accumulated by miners. The miner had 

 neither education nor incentive to record the facts so laboriously 

 collected; the scholar had yet to realize that nature must be studied 

 by observation and deduction, not by speculation alone. The 

 cosmogonist wrote his treatises on the origin of the world with his 

 vision limited by academic walls, while the miner held his knowledge 

 as important only for his need, 



Agricola was one of the first scholars to consider the practical 

 problems of the miner. His works, published in the middle of the 

 sixteenth century, show both keen observation and realization of 

 the importance of applied geology. The German mining industry 

 had at that time advanced sufTiciently to have a large technical 

 vocabulary of its own. But as Agricola wi'ote in Latin, he was 

 forced to translate these technical terms as best he could. German 

 mining methods and terminology must then have found wide accept- 



