Without weakening the claims of geology on the miner and mining engineer, it may be readily conceded that the art of mining may often be largely and profitably carried on without any scientific acquaintance with the deductions of the geologist. But while this is conceded, it is equally clear, on the other hand, that a skilful engineer, well acquainted with geology, will ever be the safer guide, and better able to surmount the difficulties that lie in the way of his admittedly arduous calling. Whether he be searching for metals among alluvial drifts, following veins and lodes for ores, or sinking shafts for coal, ironstone, fire-clay, and other stratified rocks, there are numerous facts connected with the occurrence of these minerals, their dislocations, continuity, extension, and accessibility, which can be arrived at only through the generalisations of geology. For want of such knowledge much useless labour has been spent among river-drifts in search of gold and tin, where a slight acquaintance with the science could have told at once that search was hopeless; while from the same cause immense toil has been spent on scattered sands and gravels, which a little skill could have traced up to the parent veins from which, in the course of ages, they had been disintegrated and borne away. It is also clear that in metalliferous districts, where there are several sets of veins of different ages, different contents, and different directions, there can be no satisfactory procedure without competent geological investigation. Mere empiricism may sometimes succeed, but millions have been squandered by this empiricism where a little elementary science would have forbidden the adventure. In like manner we have had ruinous searches for coal where geology could have shown its non-existence, unprofitable workings from ignorance of the geological structure of the coal-fields, and empirical dogmatisms respecting he non-existence of coal-seams where men of science had

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clearly indicated their extension and continuity. competent geologist a fossil twig or stem, a shell, coral, or fish-scale, is sufficient to indicate the presence and extent of a formation; to the mere empiric such unfailing indications have no significance. The successful sinking for coal through the New Red Sandstone of England is as much a triumph of scientific deduction as the obstinate boring for it at the base of the Old Red Sandstone in Strathearn was a defeat of empirical ignorance.*

And here we cannot help remarking how anomalous it is, in a country raising 100,000,000 tons of coal, manufacturing upwards of 8,000,000 tons of pig-iron, with lead, copper, zinc, tin, and other metals in proportion, employing hundreds of thousands of men, and expending millions of money, that there should be no qualification demanded from the mining engineer, the colliery-viewer, and others who undertake the direction and management of our mining concerns. Considering the hazardous nature of mining operations, the number of lives depending on their skilful management, and the amount of capital at risk, there never was a graver error or more culpable remissness. We demand qualifications from the captains and mates of our mercantile navy, and withdraw their certificates for error and negligence; and yet in a branch of industry requiring as much skill, and involving as much risk, any one having sufficient confidence in himself, or with a few friends to support him, may set up as mining engineer, and undertake the gravest responsibilities, without any one to question his qualifications ! Surely this is not as it ought to be; and if it be true, as is sometimes said, that capital can look after itself, there ought

* The latest misdirected attempt in search of coal that has come to our knowledge took place during the summer of the current year, a mineral borer of great ingenuity and mechanical skill having been negotiated with by two noble proprietors to make trials on their estates in the county of Banff and the northern district of Aberdeenshire !!

at least to be something done in this direction by Government, in the interests of humanity, and in behalf of a class of men who, even under the closest care and the highest skill, are ever exposed to more than the ordinary perils of industrial occupation. Considering that the law now forbids the employment of children, restricts the hours of labour for the young, and prevents the engagement of females in mines, the time is surely not far distant when provision must be made for their more skilful management, and a higher standard of qualification demanded from their viewers and engineers.

To the builder and architect in quest of beautiful, strong, and durable materials for their structures, a knowledge of Geology cannot fail to be of advantage. It is not merely the knowing where such materials occur, and how they can be most advantageously raised from the quarry, but the question of their durability, how they are affected by the weather, their absorption of moisture, the effect of exposure on their colour, hardness, and other architectural qualities. In a neighbourhood where long experience has tested the properties of a building-stone, geological information may be of little moment; but where large cities and public edifices have to draw their supplies from new and often distant localities, such knowledge is indispensable. Not only does the geologist know the abundance and position of those materials, but he sees during his field-work how they are affected by the weather, the change of colour they undergo, their tendency to absorb and retain moisture, and, generally speaking, all those properties which render them suitable or unsuitable for the purposes of the builder. It is true that chemical and mechanical tests may often be applied for the same purpose with effect, but there are cases-need we point to many of the public buildings of our own country-where such tests have signally failed, and where

only the wide observation of the geologist could have been appealed to for certain information.

Again, to the civil engineer, making road and railway cuttings, tunnelling through hills, excavating canals, docks, and harbours, boring for water, or arranging for water-supplies, no science can be of more direct importance than geology. It is true he may, in each special case, appeal to the skilled geologist, but even the appreciation of that advice will depend in a great measure on his acquaintance with the principles of geological science. No doubt, with the aid of good geological maps, and the proper skill to interpret them, the civil engineer may often see his course in a general way; but there is ever an amount of detailquality of rock, dip, jointing, dykes, dislocations, and the like—which ordinary maps do not embrace, and which can only be safely ascertained by personal inspection. Looking at the vast amount of work and capital that has been intrusted to civil engineers during the last twenty years, and to the extent to which much of the work has been blundered and bungled, one cannot avoid the conclusion, that millions might have been saved had these men possessed a competent knowledge of the nature and structure of the rock-materials through which they were passing, and in and with which they had to operate. Every height to be cut through or tunnelled has a composition and structure of its own; and though the work may be accomplished by the sheer force of capital and modern mechanical appliances, the proper question is, Will the thing pay? and could not the difficulty have been otherwise overcome, or altogether avoided, and another road chosen? Stores of water are locked up in the strata of the earth's crust, but these stores depend upon the nature of the strata—their alternations, their unbroken extent, their superficial covering, the absence or presence of dykes and faults, and other kindred phenomena—

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and without a knowledge of these, no man is in a position to say where or where not the well has to be sunk or the boring carried down. We have recently seen, in one of the largest manufacturing towns in Scotland, an eighteen-inch bore of more than 600 feet in depth, carried down at great expense, and in a situation where the merest tyro in geology could have told the attempt was utterly hopeless. And thus it will happen again and again till men begin to understand that the earth's crust has specialties of structure which can be studied and determined by the science of geology.

As with tunnelling, excavating, and boring, so with other operations that come under the direction of the civil engineer; and yet not one in ten of those so designated has anything like a competent knowledge of geology. It would be invidious to point to individual instances, but there is scarcely a contested railway bill, water bill, or dock bill that comes before a Parliamentary committee, which does not exhibit the most disgraceful exhibition of counter and incompetent evidence on matters involving a knowledge of geology. Good and excellent many of these men undoubtedly are capable of running levels, calculating earthworks, and applying mechanisms, but sadly ignorant of the structure of the country over which and through which their works have to be carried. And thus it is that we have alteration following alteration, and expense heaped upon expense, till at last the undertaking ceases to yield a return, and the capital of the unfortunate shareholders is virtually sacrificed to the ignorant blundering of so-called "Engineering."

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Though dealing with the soil, or mere superficial covering of the earth, yet seeing that the soils are either derived from, or have fixed relations to, the rocks beneath them, the farmer may, in like manner, derive important hints from