276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



has often only boon callod in when dinicHltios Avoie excessive and 

 when the train of facts or reasoning which wouhl have been so 

 vahiable to him has been lost. 



In Britain the niininjr industry is so old and the mineral wealth 

 in certain spots was so plenteous and accessible that the nietal- 

 mininfj peolojj:ist has had little chance. The eyes have been picked 

 out of the mines lon<r ap:o, and in certain cases their very bones 

 picked clean, and the count i-y has been left in such a condition 

 that its original state can only be guessed at, and problems of 

 relationship, slructuro, and origin are past solution. Consequently, 

 it is in the countries which have not been inhabited by successive 

 races of highly civilized peoples, or in relation to substances for 

 which there was in the past little or no demand, that the subject 

 has been susceptible of real advance. 



Thus it is that such strides in mining geology have been made 

 in Canada, the TTnitod States, India, South Africa, and Australia, 

 where there has been a fair field to work upon, and where preliminary 

 surveys have opened up the country and given an idea of its hidden 

 resources. In no other areas of the world has the work of official 

 surveys been watched more carefully by men of capital and enter- 

 prise, and money has rarely been lacking for development where 

 there seem to l)e prospects of a fair return for it. Fortunately, 

 too, the training of official geological survej'ors has provided a type 

 of geologist exceptionallj' well fitted both to prospect independently 

 and to follow out in minute detail, and from a different viewpoint, 

 the preliminary and less detailed examination which is all that is 

 practicable in an official survey. These men have carried with 

 them not merely competence and enthusiasm, but a thorough belief 

 in scientific principles, an extensive knowledge of borderline sciences, 

 and the ability to apply both principles and methods to the 

 problems involved. In the hands of such men the surest guides 

 are scientific principles, just as in the hands of those with '" a 

 little learning " imperfectly understood principles are most danger- 

 ous; and as the search for ores becomes keener, and as deposits 

 smaller and more tenuous become worth working, the need for 

 increased knowledge of principle and for minute detail in observa- 

 tion steadily grows. 



Fortunatel}', we have not yet exhausted the existing stores of 

 highly concentrated and singularly pure ores, salines, refractories, 

 etc., and the need is less acute than it will become eventually for 

 much improved methods of concentration and purification. When 

 we feel the pinch it will be necessary to call upon the chemist to 

 endeavor to make available the abundant suj)plies of less pure 

 and less concentrated materials which will remain over for our 



