682 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION H. 
geological puzzle. The puzzle is often easily read; at other 
times this is more obscure. But read it must be unless the 
mine is to be made a blind gamble; and he has to be himself 
sufficiently of a geologist to know when and how the 
services of the specialist are needed. He does not want 
anything at all of much that the specialist delights in; but 
he must know the broad facts of the science well, and be 
as good a petrologist and mineralogist as his other duties 
allow. 
The deposit has subsequently to be worked, and the 
mineral won by the regular operations of the civil and 
mechanical engineer; limited, indeed, in treatment by 
the conditions of mine work, and often temporary in 
character, but the same in kind, subject to the same physical 
economic laws; and he must therefore, be instructed in 
the broad general principles of the engineer’s art, with 
much special training in some branches. It is quite true 
that his work often must have less finish than a civil or 
mechanical engineer would tolerate—this is because it is” 
temporary and must pay; but, against this want of 
finish, must be set such a task to only take one example, 
as the sinking of the main-shaft of a large deep mine in 
wet ground, a task that may tax all the energy and skill 
of the specialists “in all the three branches of the pro- 
fession; but which must be done with the mining man 
as the central figure. Nowadays, he must have more than 
a passing acquaintance with the specialist in electrical 
science, and, although he must, as in previous cases, 
sometimes hand over a problem to the specialist for its 
solution, yet his own knowledge must be sufficient to keep 
the unity of the plan of his own work, and it should also 
enable him to pick the best for his own purposes out of 
competing solutions. In putting in underground motors, 
for instance, he should know what is, and what is not, 
suitable when presented to him, and not condemn 
electrical transmission because his electrical engineer was 
not a miner, nor electrocute his men because he is blindly 
trying to follow where other engineers are leading. 
The mining engineer, particularly when managing a 
property, often has to decide many purely metallurgical 
matters; indeed, it is very hard to say where the line 
can be drawn between mining and metallurgy, except, 
perhaps, in the extreme cases, such as those of the colliery 
engineer on the one side, and the mint refiner on the 
other; for, after all, the product of the commodity that 
commands the profit is not complete until the metal is 
