A glossary of mining and metallurgical terms

2 A GLOSSARY OF MINING AND METALLURGICAL TERMS.
2. To exclude Spanish, French, and German terms, unless they
fall under the rule above given. The Spanish terms included are
in use among our miners in the far West and Southwest.
3. To exclude almost all purely scientific terms, such as those
which denote the operations of chemical analysis, the chemical names
and symbols of elements and compounds, the species of rocks and
minerals, the principles of general physics and mechanics, etc.
4. To avoid scientific and technical explanations.
5. To omit, in general, self-explanatory terms, and such as are
common to all mechanical and manufacturing trades.
The grounds of these rules are evident. It was neither practica-
ble nor necessary to give in this paper what could be, and must be,
sought in technical textbooks or general dictionaries and cyclope-
dias. But the paper as presented, and to a still higher degree as
now completed, presents numerous exceptions to the above rules.
Many geological terms, for instance, are so common among miners,
and many chemical terms are so common among metallurgists as
to render their adoption in this catalogue justifial)le. The difficulty
has been to "draw the line;" and this has been done, as I must confess,
somewhat arbitrarily, and rather under the influence of a desire not
to overburden the Transactions of the Institute than in consistent
obedience to any rule.
An apology should be made for the obscurity of a few of the
definitions. Many terms taken from English glossaries were found
to be most vaguely defined ; and in most cases of this kind, I was
able to improve the definitions; but there remain some with which
I was neither sufficiently acquainted to amend them with certainty,
nor sufficiently dissatisfied to strike them out altogether, nor suf-
ficiently satisfied to let them stand without any explanation.
In many instances, the locality in which a term is believed to
have originated or to be peculiarly in use, is indicated by abbrevia-
tions which will mostly explain themselves. The principal regions
named are England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, the United
States, Spain (including Mexico), Australia, Cornwall, Derbyshire,
Staffordshire, Newcastle, Devonshire, Lake Superior, Pennsylvania,
and the Pacific slo))e (including the mining districts of the Rocky
Mountains). .It must be understood that the naming, in this con-
nection, of any one locality does not exclude the use of the term in
other localities; and particularly that in this country the circulation
both of miners and metallurgists, and of books and journals from all
the world has brouy-ht into use a heterogeneous tci'linical vocabu-