656 MINING ENGINEERING 



he must meet are entirely different from those of any other call- 

 ing. But it has been much more difficult to secure it under Amer- 

 ican than under European conditions. Besides the lack of official 

 connection between the mines and the mining schools, there has 

 been a strong prejudice against college students on the part of 

 practical men. This is partly due to experience with men trained 

 exclusively in the old classical course, and almost helpless in prac- 

 tical affairs, because absolutely without knowledge or sympathy 

 with nature. But it is also partly due to the self-assertion, flip- 

 pancy, and conceit of which young men just out of college are often 

 guilty. 



The "Mining Laboratory" 



Several solutions have been proposed to meet this difficulty. 

 The first and most original is the so-called mining laboratory, per- 

 fected through the pioneer work of Prof. R. H. Richards of the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This has since become a 

 prominent characteristic of American mining schools generally, 

 and is now being adopted in Europe. According to this plan, the 

 leading operations of crushing, concentrating, and working ores 

 are executed by the students on a small working-scale in the labora- 

 tories of the school itself. In this way the schools have become 

 partly independent of the mines, so far as the study of metallurgy 

 and ore-dressing is concerned. In purely mining practice the pro- 

 blem is more difficult. I have for ten years ; with some success, 

 made an attempt in this direction, so far as rock-drilling and blast- 

 ing are concerned. For this purpose, a mining laboratory has been 

 provided, in which the operations of sharpening, hardening, and 

 tempering drills, and the single- and double-hand drilling of blast- 

 holes, as well as machine-drilling, are illustrated on a working- 

 scale. Later, with the aid of an experienced miner, the operations 

 of blasting are conducted by the students in a neighboring quarry. 

 In the new mining building, provided for the University of Cali- 

 fornia by the generosity of Mrs. Hearst, it is proposed to extend this 

 work, as far as practicable, to other branches. These devices have 

 all proved very useful in familiarizing students with important cur- 

 rent methods, under conditions where they may be controlled and 

 studied in detail, even better than in the hurly-burly of practice. 

 The mining laboratory is one of the most important of the efforts 

 of American schools to adjust themselves to their environment. 



The Summer School of Practical Mining 



But helpful as this method has proved to be, it still fails to bring 

 the student face to face with the actual conditions of mining prac- 

 tice. The next important step was taken by Prof. Henry S. Mun- 



