AS A MINING EXPERT 335 



accustomed to say, was to keep people out of wild-cat schemes, 

 and make them examine a "proposition" with cool and critical 

 eyes. This he did not always succeed in doing. He writes to one 

 of his clients : " I regret to hear that you are determined to pro- 

 ceed to spend money on but one test of your property. It is 

 evident that I cannot help you by wholesome advice. Let me 

 say once again that you are putting yourself in a position to 

 waste money that might readily be saved. With this I will close 

 my correspondence." It is noteworthy that his cautious, pains- 

 taking handling of the practical side of mining should so often 

 have been preceded by a brilliant theoretic conception of the 

 problem. The Alder Mine, in which Mr. McKay became inter- 

 ested and which is a part of his endowment to Harvard, was in 

 the first place an imaginary discovery, based on a theoretic 

 hypothesis. The minerals he had to do with chiefly were gold, 

 iron, the prime metal of civilization as he called it, and 

 coal ; with reference to their distribution he made many reports 

 for railway companies and organized surveys for the extension 

 of their roads. In his writings about these substances the state- 

 ment of facts is, as is usual with him, accompanied by general 

 and philosophical comments. In an article entitled "The 

 Exhaustion of the World's Metals," he says: "It is evident 

 that the economic side of human advance, as well as the greater 

 part of the contriving foresight which characterizes it, depends 

 upon the qualities of the materials men turn to account. The 

 story of the adaptation of substances to desires did not begin with 

 man. It is common among the bees and ants and other insects. 

 We see it in the nests of birds, in the hot-bed in which the brush- 

 turkey lays her eggs: these contrivances generally relate to 

 utility alone, yet often the sense of beauty guides the construc- 

 tions, so that the aesthetic as well as the utilitarian motives 

 appear to exist in the minds of many highly developed animals. 

 ... In the case of man, each of his early and simple conquests 

 has given a sense of the powers of the outer world, so that even 

 the lowest savage becomes an inquirer, a man of science explor- 



