Georgius Agricola, Translated by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover. Sb, 638pp, Dover Publications 1950

Originally published in 1556, Agricola's De Re Metallica was the first book on mining to be based on field research and observation and for almost 200 years it remained the only authoritative work on the subject, with only its Latin text preventing it from being as widely used at it might have been. Once translated by the former President Hoover and his wife in 1912, it quickly became a modern classic. This edition is a republication of the 1912 edition and it includes all 289 of the original woodcuts as well as four facsimile pages from the Latin original. The text covers material on alluvial mining, alchemy, silver refining, smelting, surveying, timbering, nitric acid manufacture, legal aspects on mining, the use of boundary stones, safety requirements for tunnel building and much, much more. (creases top right hand side of cover)