i88 5 .1 
Analyses of Books. 303 
mos .^ productive deposits have during the three centuries 
of Spanish rule been discovered and ransacked. 
It is sometimes contended that the system of extrafting the 
precious metal from its ores, as followed by the Spanish- 
American population, is very imperfea. This is a mistake. 
Humboldt, himself a pupil of the great Freiberg Mining School, 
came, after a very close investigation, to a different conclusion. 
European capitalists who have thought that, by the introduaion 
of Cornish miners and Saxon smelters, they could open up a new 
epoch of prosperity, have repeatedly had to smart for their rash- 
ness, One especially unpleasant faa remains : if the wages and 
otner outlay in each mining distria in South America are com- 
pared with the quantity of fine silver realised, a loss of about 
50 per cent is perceptible ! Thus the Spanish-American re- 
publics are being impoverished by this ruinous industry, and 
hence they perforce must cease to be importers of British manu- 
factures. In the United States wages are about three times 
higher than in Mexico and Peru, and if the process of silver 
mining proves to be a losing game we need not flatter ourselves 
that the shrewd Americans will carry it on long. 
All things considered, the author finds that the world’s annual 
yield of silver cannot be rated as higher than ten millions sterling 
annually, with no definite prospect of its increase. Hence, he 
argues that the re-monetisation of this metal is not so much ex- 
pedient as absolutely necessary in the present depressed state of 
trade. We wish our Government would venture on the experi- 
ment. 
Bulletin of the California Academy of Sciences. Nos. 2 and 3, 
January and February, 1885. San Francisco: G. Spaulding 
and Co. 
The former of these issues is devoted to a crystallographic study 
of Colemanite, a new borate of lime, discovered, it appears, by 
Mr. R. Neuschwander, and now under examination by the 
author, Mr. A. Wendell Jackson. We may be permitted to ask 
whether the term morphology is not here used in a somewhat 
unusual manner, as it is ordinarily taken to signify the structure 
of organised beings. The mineral in question very closely ap- 
proximates to datholite, but is yet a distinct species. 
Mr. J. T. Evans communicates a chemical examination of 
colemanite, pointing out its relations to pandermite and priceite, 
and he raises the question whether pandermite may not be an 
altered or derived form of colemanite ? 
In the second issue, Dr, H. H. Behr gives an account of three 
