Mine Drainage; being a Complete Practical Treatise on Direct-Acting Underground Steam Pumping Machinery

Abstract

AS a somewhat heterogeneous collection of statistics, drawings and descriptions of pumping machinery, the work before us probably stands unrivalled in our own or any other language. It is profusely illustrated by means of excellent phototypes and woodcuts of pumping engines, as well as the details of their valves and valve gear, and contains minute verbal descriptions of their construction and mode of action. According to the author, most of the drawings have been supplied by the engine-makers, a fact with which no fault can be found, since there is no better source from which illustrations for a work like this can be obtained. But when we come to a consideration of the verbal descriptions the matter as sumes a different aspect. Except in those cases in which an author feels himself bound to explain the views or original work of another author with precision, so as to avoid the possibility of misconstruction, descriptions quoted verbatim are out of place. In describing appliances with which he is, or ought to be, familiar, he should do so in his own words and from his own point of view, and at the same time give the reader the benefit of his opinions and criticism. If he quotes page after page from trade catalogues as our author does, not omitting even letters of commendation from customers, he abdicates his claim to the position of an author and becomes a simple compiler.

Mine Drainage; being a Complete Practical Treatise on Direct-Acting Underground Steam Pumping Machinery.

By Stephen Michell. Second edition. Pp. xviii + 369. (London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1899.)