Owing to recent rich discoveries in more than one mining field, hundreds of shrewd, intelligent men without experience in prospecting are turning their attention to that arduous pursuit—to such this book is offered as a safe guide. A complex subject has been treated as simply as its nature permitted, and when a scientific term could not be avoided, the explanation in the glossary has been offered.

A steady demand for this work has shown that it fills a want, and serves the purpose for which it was written. In issuing this second edition, a few compositors' errors that had crept in, owing to the author being in a very remote region while the book was going through the press, have been corrected, but no material changes in the text were found desirable.

Many men seem to think that should their destinies lead them into parts of the world where there is mineral wealth they will have little chance of discovering the deposits without the technical education of a mining engineer. This is wrong. The fact is that the sphere of the prospector does not cover that of the engineer. The work of the one ends where that of the other begins, and many of the most successful discoverers of metallic wealth have been entirely ignorant of the methods by which a great mine should be opened, developed, and worked.

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