Notices respecting Neiv Books. 63 



Great Britain and Ireland is valued at £24,000,000 per annum, or 

 about four-ninths of that of all Europe, there existed until now no 

 means in this country for affording needful instruction to those who 

 thus raise so large an amount of mineral matter ; all was left to 

 chance, and the result is well known. Many who can afford it go 

 to other lands to study in the mining schools provided by their go- 

 vernments ; some fight through their difficulties at home, becoming 

 valuable and useful men ; while the mass of our miners remain un- 

 instructed, except so far as they can pick up practical information 

 from each other in the mines." " Are our miners," demands the 

 lecturer, " less deserving of attention than those of other lands, or 

 are they supposed to be so dull and disinclined to knowledge as not 

 to be capable of profiting as well as the miners of other nations by 

 instruction ? Let those who thus believe visit our mining districts, 

 especially such as are metalliferous, where the miner has so often to 

 gain his daily bread by the exercise of his judgement, and they will 

 speedily be undeceived. They will find men as able and willing to 

 profit by instruction as elsewhere in our land. They will see many 

 with powerful minds, who have risen from amid all their difficulties, 

 adding continually and greatly to our stock of practical knowledge, 

 but who would evidently have accomplished far more, if in their early 

 day they had possessed the advantage of starting with the knowledge 

 of the time applicable to their pursuits." 



The wants here indicated it is the design of the School of Mines 

 in some measure to supply. It is proposed to instruct by means of 

 the collections, the laboratories, the Mining Record Office, the lec- 

 tures, and the Geological Survey. It is also purposed to explain by 

 evening lectures to the working men of London, — those really en- 

 gaged in business, and whose good characters can be vouched for by 

 their employers, — such parts of the collections as may be thought to 

 be usefully interesting to them. There are also indications of move- 

 ments in this direction in the mineral districts ; and it is trusted that 

 those who locally distinguish themselves by the application of their 

 abilities may find in the Government School of Mines, free of cost, 

 the means of still further advancing their own knowledge. 



We next take up the Introductory Lecture of Professor Playfair, 

 On the National Importance of studying Abstract Science. This 

 lecture opens the Chemical Course for the present session. Ably 

 and convincingly the writer demonstrates the dependence of prac- 

 tical results upon abstract investigations ; proves that discoveries, 

 apparently the most remote and unpromising, have resulted in the 

 most important practical issues ; takes us to the gardens of the 

 Luxembourg, and shows us Malus looking at the open window 

 through a crystal of calcareous spar — apparently a most unpractical 

 act, yet one, by the following up of which we are now enabled to pierce 

 the ocean and investigate its rocks and shoals, and which in the hands 

 of Biot has led to the most refined method of ascertaining the quan- 

 tity of sugar in saccharine solutions ; introduces us to Galvani opera- 

 ting upon a dead frog on the iron palisades of Bologna, and shows how 

 the discovery there made has resulted in the electric telegraph, and 



