TRANSLATORS' PREFACE. 



HERE are three objectives in translation of works 

 of this character : to give a faithful, literal trans- 

 lation of the author's statements ; to give these 

 in a manner which will interest the reader ; and to 

 preserve, so far as is possible, the style of the 

 original text. The task has been doubly difficult 

 in this work because, in using Latin, the author 

 availed himself of a medium which had ceased to 

 expand a thousand years before his subject had in 

 many particulars come into being ; in consequence he was in difficulties 

 with a large number of ideas for which there were no corresponding 

 words in the vocabulary at his command, and instead of adopting into the 

 text his native German terms, he coined several hundred Latin expressions 

 to answer his needs. It is upon this rock that most former attempts at 

 translation have been wrecked. Except for a very small number, we 

 believe we have been able to discover the intended meaning of such 

 expressions from a study of the context, assisted by a very incomplete 

 glossary prepared by the author himself, and by an exhaustive investigation 

 into the literature of these subjects during the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries. That discovery in this particular has been only gradual and 

 obtained after much labour, may be indicated by the fact that the entire 

 text has been re-typewritten three times since the original, and some 

 parts more often ; and further, that the printer's proof has been thrice revised. 

 We have found some English equivalent, more or less satisfactory, for 

 practically all such terms, except those of weights, the varieties of veins, 

 and a few minerals. In the matter of weights we have introduced the 

 original Latin, because it is impossible to give true equivalents and avoid the 

 fractions of reduction ; and further, as explained in the Appendix on Weights it 

 is impossible to say in many cases what scale the Author had in mind. The 

 English nomenclature to be adopted has given great difficulty, for various 

 reasons ; among them, that many methods and processes described have 

 never been practised in English-speaking mining communities, and so had no 

 representatives in our vocabulary, and we considered the introduction of 

 German terms undesirable ; other methods and processes have become 

 obsolete and their descriptive terms with them, yet we wished to avoid 

 the introduction of obsolete or unusual English ; but of the greatest 

 importance of all has been the necessity to avoid rigorously such modern 

 technical terms as would imply a greater scientific understanding than the 

 period possessed. 



Agricola's Latin, while mostly free from mediaeval corruption, is some- 

 what tainted with German construction. Moreover some portions have not 



