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Translator: Herbert Clark Hoover Lou Henry Hoover
GEORGIUS AGRICOLA
DE RE METALLICA
TRANSLATED FROM THE FIRST LATIN EDITION OF 1556
with
Biographical Introduction, Annotations and Appendices upon the Development of Mining Methods, Metallurgical Processes, Geology, Mineralogy & Mining Law from the earliest times to the 16th Century
HERBERT CLARK HOOVER
A. B. Stanford University, Member American Institute of Mining Engineers, Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, Soci?t? des Ing?ni?urs Civils de France, American Institute of Civil Engineers, Fellow Royal Geographical Society, etc., etc.
AND
LOU HENRY HOOVER
A. B. Stanford University, Member American Association for the Advancement of Science, The National Geographical Society, Royal Scottish Geographical Society, etc., etc.
NEW YORK
JOHN CASPAR BRANNER Ph.D.,
This New 1950 Edition of DE RE METALLICA is a complete and unchanged reprint of the translation published by The Mining Magazine, London, in 1912. It has been made available through the kind permission of Honorable Herbert C. Hoover and Mr. Edgar Rickard, Author and Publisher, respectively, of the original volume.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.
There are three objectives in translation of works of this character: to give a faithful, literal translation of the author's statements; to give these in a manner which will interest the reader; and to preserve, so far as is possible, the style of the original text. The task has been doubly difficult in this work because, in using Latin, the author availed himself of a medium which had ceased to expand a thousand years before his subject had in many particulars come into being; in consequence he was in difficulties with a large number of ideas for which there were no corresponding words in the vocabulary at his command, and instead of adopting into the text his native German terms, he coined several hundred Latin expressions to answer his needs. It is upon this rock that most former attempts at translation have been wrecked. Except for a very small number, we believe we have been able to discover the intended meaning of such expressions from a study of the context, assisted by a very incomplete glossary prepared by the author himself, and by an exhaustive investigation into the literature of these subjects during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That discovery in this particular has been only gradual and obtained after much labour, may be indicated by the fact that the entire text has been re-typewritten three times since the original, and some parts more often; and further, that the printer's proof has been thrice revised. We have found some English equivalent, more or less satisfactory, for practically all such terms, except those of weights, the varieties of veins, and a few minerals. In the matter of weights we have introduced the original Latin, because it is impossible to give true equivalents and avoid the fractions of reduction; and further, as explained in the Appendix on Weights it is impossible to say in many cases what scale the Author had in mind. The English nomenclature to be adopted has given great difficulty, for various reasons; among them, that many methods and processes described have never been practised in English-speaking mining communities, and so had no representatives in our vocabulary, and we considered the introduction of German terms undesirable; other methods and processes have become obsolete and their descriptive terms with them, yet we wished to avoid the introduction of obsolete or unusual English; but of the greatest importance of all has been the necessity to avoid rigorously such modern technical terms as would imply a greater scientific understanding than the period possessed.
There are no footnotes in the original text, and Mr. Hoover is responsible for them all. He has attempted in them to give not only such comment as would tend to clarify the text, but also such information as we have been able to discover with regard to the previous history of the subjects mentioned. We have confined the historical notes to the time prior to Agricola, because to have carried them down to date in the briefest manner would have demanded very much more space than could be allowed. In the examination of such technical and historical material one is appalled at the flood of mis-information with regard to ancient arts and sciences which has been let loose upon the world by the hands of non-technical translators and commentators. At an early stage we considered that we must justify any divergence of view from such authorities, but to limit the already alarming volume of this work, we later felt compelled to eliminate most of such discussion. When the half-dozen most important of the ancient works bearing upon science have been translated by those of some scientific experience, such questions will, no doubt, be properly settled.
We have prepared a short sketch of Agricola's life and times, not only to give some indication of his learning and character, but also of his considerable position in the community in which he lived. As no appreciation of Agricola's stature among the founders of science can be gained without consideration of the advance which his works display over those of his predecessors, we therefore devote some attention to the state of knowledge of these subjects at the time by giving in the Appendix a short review of the literature then extant and a summary of Agricola's other writings. To serve the bibliophile we present such data as we have been able to collect it with regard to the various editions of his works. The full titles of the works quoted in the footnotes under simply authors' names will be found in this Appendix.
It is our pleasure to acknowledge our obligations to Professor H. R. Fairclough, of Stanford University, for perusal of and suggestions upon the first chapter; and to those whom we have engaged from time to time for one service or another, chiefly bibliographical work and collateral translation. We are also sensibly obligated to the printers, Messrs. Frost & Sons, for their patience and interest, and for their willingness to bend some of the canons of modern printing, to meet the demands of the 16th Century.
The Red House, Hornton Street, London.
INTRODUCTION.
BIOGRAPHY.
We know practically nothing of Agricola's antecedents or his youth. His real name was Georg Bauer , and it was probably Latinized by his teachers,
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