Excerpt from A History of the Precious Metals: From the Earliest to the Present

Del Mar's History of the Precious Metals was begun in 1858, laid aside in 1862, when the author published his first work on Money, resumed in 1869, completed in 1879, and published during the fol lowing year by Messrs. Geo. Bell Sons, of London. The merits of the work were at once recognized by the literary press, portions of it were translated and republished with approbation by the journal dc: Economist and other Continental journals, and the edition was soon exhausted. But until within late years the author's occupation as a Mining Engineer took him so far afield that he found it imprac ticable to revise the work for a second publication: a task which he always expressed himself anxious to accomplish.

The plan of the present work embraces a history of the precious metals in each important country by itself, from the earliest times to the present. After this, the subject is treated from a general stand point; the produce of the world at various epochs is brought to gether, the consumption in the arts and for coinage is shown, to gether with the resulting stocks on hand in the form of coins and bullion. This is the framing of the work: the body of it is filled with the most interesting and in some instances very important historical material. The history of the Veneti of Pontus, an ancient race of miners who settled in Greece and N orth Germany, and afterwards in Italy at a very remote period, is here brought to light for the first time; the Tschudic remains found in the Siberian tundras; and the Roman mining laws of the Peak of Derby, which are still en forced, are among the strikingly original subjects treated in this volume. The South American Revolution of 1732, and the system of contract-labour which prevails to-day in the Mysore and British South African gold mines, to the disadvantage of australia, california, Colorado, and the free mining States generally, are also new lights shed upon a little understood, but highly important, subject.

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