518 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1274 



bring into toucli with one another candidates 

 for positions and vacancies to be filled. 

 E. D. Brown, 

 UNivEESirY or Minnesota, Secretary 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Mineral Deposits of South America. By 

 Benjamin L. Miller, professor of geology, 

 Lehigh University, and Joseph T. Singe- 

 WALD, associate professor of economic geol- 

 ogy, Johns Hopkins University. New York, 

 McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. 1919. 

 Pp. 598, with 61 figs. 



South America is a continent richly en- 

 dowed with mineral resources: In Brazil are 

 the largest high-grade iron-ore deposits in the 

 world; at Chuquicamata, Chile, is the largest 

 copper deposit in the world and the copper re- 

 sources of Chile are second only to those of 

 the United States; the nitrates of Chile con- 

 stitute a world monopoly of that commodity; 

 the tin lodes of Bolivia are by far the most 

 productive in the world, their annual output 

 being seven fold that of their nearest com- 

 petitor ; the world's greatest vanadium deposits 

 are in Peru; and the only considerable source 

 of platinum outside of Russia is in Colombia. 

 The mineral deposits are not only of great 

 importance commercially but are also of deep 

 interest scientifically; and, as the present book 

 by Professors Miller and Singewald shows, 

 not more than a beginning has been made in 

 solving the geologic problems they present. 



The book under review, as we are told in 

 the preface, is " the outcome of an extended 

 trip through South America made by the 

 authors in 1915." It is essentially a digest of 

 available information on the mineral deposits 

 of that continent, supplemented, however, by 

 data the authors obtained during the visits, 

 necessarily hasty, that they made to many of 

 the mineral deposits of Brazil, Chile and Peru. 

 The opening chapter of the volume gives 

 an outline of the geography, general geology 

 and mineral resources of South America. It 

 sketches also the history of the growth of the 

 mineral industry, discusses the relation of 

 mining to other industries, and outlines the 

 probable trend of the future development. 



In view of the ground covered, the chapter, 

 comprising thirty-two pages, is somewhat 

 scant. It could be improved also by the ad- 

 dition of a series of outline maps of the con- 

 tinent showing quantitatively where the more 

 important mineral commodities are produced, 

 and by the insertion of statistical tables and 

 diagrams showing the relation of South Amer- 

 ica's mineral output to that of the rest of 

 the world. Such aids in giving the reader 

 generalized views of the continent as a whole 

 are conspicuously few in the present volume, 

 but their urgent desirability should be con- 

 sidered by the authors when a new edition is 

 planned. In places throughout the book there 

 is an imnecessarily abundant use of local 

 Latin-American terms, for most of which the 

 authors could easily have substituted perfectly 

 good English equivalents. 



The remaining eleven chapters take up in 

 alphabetical order the countries of South 

 America. The description of the mineral re- 

 sources of each is introduced by a summary of 

 production. In places some statistical errors 

 have crept in, as on page 77, where the outputs 

 of lead, zinc and tin of Bolivia are given in 

 terms of metal, whereas the figures cited are 

 in reality those of ore or concentrate. Nor is 

 it mentioned that the unit employed is the 

 metric ton. These oversights are pointed out 

 in passing, because current international sta- 

 tistics of mineral output are commonly 

 vitiated by similar lapses. The summary of 

 mineral production is followed by sketches of 

 the topographic and geologic features of the 

 country, of the distribution of the mineral 

 deposits, and of the occurrence of the chief 

 mineral resources. This general treatment is 

 followed by more detailed descriptions of the 

 important deposits and districts. Each chap- 

 ter closes with a selected bibliography, the 

 number of entries ranging up to 225 titles for 

 the chapter on Chile. The entries are gener- 

 ally accompanied by brief synoptic character- 

 izations. It is not always indicated that some 

 Latin-American entries are merely transla- 

 tions of papers that appeared originally in 

 French, German, American or other publi- 

 cations. 



One of the notable sections of the volume 



