ORDINARY MEETIN(JS. xHx 



Skcoxi) OitDiNAUY Mi:etixg. 



Assembly Room, rrovince Building. Halifax, IJth Dec, 1905. 



The President, Mr. Doane, in the chair. 



W. E. I.isHMAX, M. A., M. I. M. E., of Durham, KngUuuJ, read 

 a paper entitled, " Mining, Is it a Seienee?," in the course of wiiich 

 he said : 



" It is safe to say tliat mining np to witliin recent years has 

 stood in its own light. It has been regarded as essentially prac- 

 tical, the tlieoretical side of it being almost entirely ignored. It 

 used to be a sine qua non for one holding an official position that 

 he should l)e, to borrow an expression used in coal mining, " a good 

 pitman." AVe will not (juarrel with this, as it is very essential that 

 a, man who is to see to the actual working of a mine should be a 

 really ]H"actical man, and so long as mining was carried on in a 

 rule-()f-thumb fashion and simi)ly consisted in raising compara- 

 tively easily obtained and accessible minerals to the surface, such 

 a man was the most suitable for the ptirpose. But now tliat in 

 many countries the process of extracting and raising minerals, so 

 far from being the simple affair it once was, has become one of the 

 most complicated and far-reaching that man is called upon to per- 

 form, we may well question the policy of setting so much store by 

 the purely practical man. And be it observed that it is just at the 

 time when mining is making this nuirked advance forward, when, 

 that is, methods are becoming more and more complicated, that 

 scientific education on its part is making a like advance. The one 

 is in fact complementary to the other. But such is the conser- 

 vatism in human nature that in spite of the increasing complexity 

 of mining operations on the one hand, and in spitv; oi tlio impetus 

 given to technical education on the other to meet this, yet those in 

 authority are only now beginning to give up their i)i-e(lilections for 

 the • practical num ' and to go in for one who l)y judicious training 

 in practical and theoretical work should in all senses of the word 

 prove more efficient for an official position than the former. It is 

 for this reason that I say that milling has to a certain extent stood 

 in its own light; hut it is satisfactory to notice that a change is 

 now taking place, as indeed it was bound to do, and the value of 



