whatever cause the heat of flame had swallowed up the forests with a frightful crackling from their very roots, and had thoroughly baked the earth with fire, there would run from the boiling veins and collect into the hollows of the grounds a stream of silver and gold, as well as of copper and lead."[1] But yet the poet considers that the veins are not laid bare in the first instance so much by this kind of fire, but rather that all mining had its origin in this. And lastly, some other force may by chance disclose the veins, for a horse, if this tale can be believed, disclosed the lead veins at Goslar by a blow from his hoof[2] . By such methods as these does fortune disclose the veins to us.
But by skill we can also investigate hidden and concealed veins, by observing in the first place the bubbling waters of springs, which cannot be very far distant from the veins because the source of the water is from them; secondly, by examining the fragments of the veins which the torrents break off from the earth, for after a long time some of these fragments are again buried in the ground. Fragments of this kind lying about on the ground, if they are rubbed smooth, are a long distance from the veins, because the torrent, which broke them from the vein, polished them while it rolled them a long distance; but if they are fixed in the ground, or if they are rough, they are nearer to the veins. The soil also should be considered, for this is often the cause of veins being buried more or less deeply under the earth; in this case the fragments protrude more or less widely apart, and miners are wont to call the veins discovered in this manner " fragmenta."[3] Further, we search for the veins by observing the hoar-frosts, which whiten all herbage except that growing over the veins, because the veins emit a warm and dry exhalation which hinders the freezing of the moisture, for which reason such plants appear rather wet than whitened by the frost. This may be observed in all cold places before the grass has grown to its full size, as in the months of April and May; or when the late crop of
- ↑ "Lucretius De Rerum Natura v. 1241.
- ↑ Agricola’s account of this event in De Veteribus et Novis Metallis is as follows (p. 393): " Now veins are not always first disclosed by the hand and labour of man, nor has art ’ always demonstrated them; sometimes they have been disclosed rather by chance or by ’ good fortune. I will explain briefly what has been written upon this matter in history, ’ what miners tell us, and what has occurred in our times. Thus the mines at Goslar are ’ said to have been found in the following way. A certain noble, whose name is not recorded, ’ tied his horse, which was named Ramelus, to the branch of a tree which grew on the ’ mountain. This horse, pawing the earth with its hoofs, which were iron shod, and thus ’ turning it over, uncovered a hidden vein of lead, not unlike the winged Pegasus, who in the ’ legend of the poets opened a spring when he beat the rock with his hoof. So just as that ’ spring is named Hipprocrene after that horse, so our ancestors named the mountain ’ Rammelsberg. Whereas the perennial water spring of the poets would long ago have dried ’ up, the vein even to-day exists, and supplies an abundant amount of excellent lead. That ’ a horse can have opened a vein will seem credible to anyone who reflects in how many ways ’ the signs of veins are shown by chance, all of which are explained in my work De Re ’ Metallica. Therefore, here we will believe the story, both because it may happen that a ’ horse may disclose a vein, and because the name of the mountain agrees with the story." Agricola places the discovery of Goslar in the Hartz at prior to 936. See Note n, p. 5.
- ↑ Fragmenta. The glossary gives " Geschube." This term is denned in the Bergwerks’Lexicon (Chemnitz, 1743, p 250) as the pieces of stone, especially tin-stone, broken from the vein and washed out by the water the croppings.
