11 .

TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE.

the continuous flow of sustained thought which others display, but the factthat the writing of the work extended over a period of twenty years, suffic-iently explains the considerable variation in style. The technical descriptionsin the later books often take the form of House-that-Jack-built sentenceswhich have had to be at least partially broken up and the subjectoccasionally re-introduced. Ambiguities were also sometimes found which itwas necessary to carry on into the translation. Despite these criticisms wemust, however, emphasize that Agricola was infinitely clearer in his stylethan his contemporaries upon such subjects, or for that matter than hissuccessors in almost any language for a couple of centuries. All of theillustrations and display letters of the original have been reproduced andthe type as closely approximates to the original as the printers have beenable to find in a modern font.

There are no footnotes in the original text, and Mr. Hoover is responsiblefor them all. He has attempted in them to give not only such commentas would tend to clarify the text, but also such information as we havebeen able to discover with regard to the previous history of the subjectsmentioned. We have confined the historical notes to the time prior toAgricola, because to have carried them down to date in the briefest mannerwould have demanded very much more space than could be allowed. In theexamination of such technical and historical material one is appalled at theflood of mis-information with regard to ancient arts and sciences which hasbeen let loose upon the world by the hands of non-technical translators andcommentators. At an early stage we considered that we must justify anydivergence of view from such authorities, but to limit the already alarmingvolume of this work, we later felt compelled to eliminate most of such dis-cussion. When the half-dozen most important of the ancient works bearingupon science have been translated by those of some scientific experience,such questions will, no doubt, be properly settled.

We need make no apologies for De Re Metallica. During 180 yearsit was not superseded as the text-book and guide to miners and metallurgists,for until Schliiter’s great work on metallurgy in 1738 it had no equal. Thatit passed through some ten editions in three languages at a period when theprinting of such a volume was no ordinary undertaking, is in itself sufficientevidence of the importance in which it was held, and is a record that no othervolume upon the same subjects has equalled since. A large proportion of thetechnical data given by Agricola was either entirely new, or had not beengiven previously with sufficient detail and explanation to have enabled aworker in these arts himself to perform the operations without further guid-ance. Practically the whole of it must have been given from personal ex-perience and observation, for the scant library at his service can be appreci-ated from his own Preface. Considering the part which the metallic artshave played in human history, the paucity of their literature down toAgricola’s time is amazing. No doubt the arts were jealously guarded bytheir practitioners as a sort of stock-in-trade, and it is also probable thatthose who had knowledge were not usually of a literary turn of mind ; and,