228 Notices respecting New Books. 



notice. To one of these we will confine ourselves : — " I have known," 

 says Mr. Smyth, " zinc hlende taken for lead ore, and honoured with 

 the erection of a smelting furnace, when to the chagrin of the 

 manager the volatile metal flew away up the chimney, leaving only 

 disappointment and loss behind. Again, from a faint resemblance 

 which some of the varieties bear to certain iron ores, a resemblance 

 which would at once disappear before accurate observation, a consi- 

 derable quantity was bought not long since by one of the greatest 

 iron-masters in this country. It was carried to the furnaces, duly 

 mingled with fuel and flux, and after a strenuous effort had been 

 made to get it to yield iron, it all, as the proprietor naively re- 

 marked, ' went off in smoke.' " 



But a matter of far more importance than the correction of isolated 

 mistakes is the investigation of the principles which regulate the 

 accumulation of ore in metalliferous veins, — a subject so enveloped 

 in mystery, that our present mining enterprises are almost as much 

 a matter of chance as such enterprises were three centuries ago. 

 " Copious stores of knowledge have, it is true, been acquired by 

 many of the captains and tributers in Cornwall and elsewhere ; but 

 besides the difficulty, according to the various views of individuals, 

 in collating them, they have generally, for want of early educational 

 opportunity, been accumulated upon an unsafe basis ; and finally, the 

 experiences perish with the men, leaving society no richer for their 

 acquisition." 



Referring to the vast mineral resources of Great Britain, and the 

 multitude which derive employment and support from this source, 

 the lecturer earnestly proceeds : " Let us then consider the great 

 population supported directly by the extraction of these minerals, 

 and indirectly by their application to the arts — the maintenance of 

 hundreds of thousands of men by these not inexhaustible stores, and 

 the entire dependence of our whole manufacturing and commercial 

 system on the supply of fossil fuel ; and we cannot fail to arrive at 

 the conviction, that in exercising the stewardship of such gifts of 

 Heaven the nation has a high and responsible duty to perform, that 

 waste and improvidence are a national sin, and that it behoves all 

 who are in any way connected with the working of our mines to lend 

 their best endeavours to the perfecting of the most ceconomical and 

 efficacious means of rendering all the products of our mines available 

 to the uses of mankind." 



Among the methods employed for ascertaining the existence of use- 

 ful deposits, the lecturer refers at some length to the art of boring, 

 and recommends steel instead of iron borers ; — refers to the pneumatic 

 dam of M. Triger for keeping back water while sinking shafts ; to 

 the ventilation of mines ; to the necessity of accurate surveys, and 

 the vast dangers incurred in this respect ; to the dressing of the 

 ores, and the improvidence at present exhibited in California and 

 Australia ; to the ignorant assertion that England can afford to 

 squander her mineral riches, holding up the boast of Xenophon of 

 the inexhaustibility of the silver mines of Laurion as a warning to 

 ourselves. " When the day comes that our preponderance in natural 



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