APPENDIX—GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 
449 
A knowledge of mineral veins and the laws governing their 
formation, filling and development cannot be obtained from 
hand specimens ; nor can it be taught successfully on a black¬ 
board, or from textbooks. Such information is obtained only 
by long continued practical observation. It is true that this 
question has been taken up by scientific men, and introduced 
into scientific schools, and theories have been formed and giv¬ 
en to practical men as guides to direct them in their work, and 
to explain the natural phenomena with which they come in 
contact. But such theories, as a general thing, have been but 
little use to the miner ; the principles they inculcate seem to 
have but little adaptation to the phenomena they are designed 
to explain; hence the miner has thrown them aside, trusting 
rather to his own judgment. 
Certainly no branch of industry is more dependent on a 
knowledge of natural phenomena than mining. And it is a 
mistake that practical men do not study this phenomena, and 
from it form theories to guide them in their work. They are 
trained in this work almost from infancy, and their faculties or 
powers of observation are developed to such a degree that 
they recognize intuitively the features of good mineral-bearing 
strata or of fissures that are likely to be productive. Hence 
their ideas are not so much theories as a sort of instinct, formed 
/ 
by long continued observations in every-day life. The prac¬ 
tical miner may not be able to tell us why these are the fea 
tures of good mineral-bearing strata, or why these fissures are 
likely to be productive, but in his judgment they are, and this 
judgment well matured, like instinct, is in most cases infallible. 
Between the theories formed by scientific men, in scientific 
schools (and as is often the case, from imperfect data, or a nar¬ 
row range of observation), and the theories formed from the 
experience of ages and the closest observation of practical 
men, there has been and still is a conflict. And because of 
this conflict and want of adaptation in so-called scientific prin¬ 
ciples to explain natural phenomena, there has arisen also a 
feeling of hostility among practical men generally to all scien¬ 
tific teaching on these questions. 
29—Ag. Tr, 
