A Treatise on Metalliferous Minerals and Mining. By D. C.
Davies. (Crosby Lockwood and Co.)—This pleasant-looking and substantial A Treatise on Metalliferous Minerals and Mining. By D. C. Davies. (Crosby Lockwood and Co.)—This pleasant-looking and substantial
volume will not bear a critical scrutiny, It is eminently unscientific.
Not that intelligibility and attractiveness have been attained, or even sought for, by the rejection or simplification of scientific terms,—no, the objection which we make to this treatise is, that the author uses scientific language wrongly, and is not sufficiently acquainted with the facts of the geological sequence of strata to fulfil the task which he has undertaken. From his first half-dozen pages we can, by a moment's inspection, gather a crowd of inaccuracies of diction quite inexcusable in a work intended " to describe the conditions under which metals and metallic ores are found in the different countries of
the world." On page 1, for instance, mineral species are made identical with varieties, and then these varieties are said to be "com-
prised within 63 simple elements." Had there been but 63 elements in the year 1880 (the date of Mr. Davies's title-page), we should have pre- ferred to say that-they wore comprised in the minerals, rather than tho minerals in the elements. But the author has evidently not yet heard of gallium, not to mention any of the later additions to the metallic family. Travelling no further than p. 2, we are told that "the elements, with their combinations, are distinguishable iu a variety of ways ;" while one of the physical properties is thus de- fined,—" Opaqueness or transparency : thus quartz is described as ` lustre vitreous inclining to resinous,' " as if lustre and transparency were synonymous. We do not deny all merit to the work ; we acknowledge the labour that has been spent upon its compilation ; wo regard the practical mining directions as the result of consider- able experience ; and we find a number of illustrations, chiefly show- ing sections and mining operations and apparatus, which are not without value or interest; but we are obliged to confess that a largo part of the mineralogy, geology, and statistics of the volume cannot be regarded as worthy of acceptance.
Previous page
