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CHARLES M. WHEATLEY'S LIBRARY.

THIS is a small collection, containing not more than fifteen hundred volumes, consisting for the most part of works on Mining, Mineralogy, Geology, and Natural History. The collection of works on Mining and Mine Engineering is probably as complete as any in this country. Of these, Agricola's De re Metallica, some three hundred years old, is one of the most interesting. It contains notices of the commencement of the mines of Freiberg, Goslar, Cremnitz, and Schemnitz, the ceremony of taking possession, modes of working, and machinery used in the mines. The plates of water-wheels, stamps, and pumps, for raising, dressing, and preparing the ores, and for smelting, are very curious, showing at that early period in the history of mining, great perfection in the art. Among the plates are chain-pumps, horse-powers and machinery for separating ores, corresponding to those in use at the present day. There are also some curious old works in the collection, as Diodorus Siculus's History of the World;

The Mirror of Stones, by Camillus Leonardus, 1502; Hardy's Miner's Guide, 1748, which contains an account of the loadstone, with the invention of the compass, and a description of mineral veins, and mining laws and customs; Gesner's De omni rerum Fossilium, genere gemmis lapidibus, Metallis, &c., Tiguri, 1565; Unwin on Tin; Behren's Natural History of the Hartz Forest; and the "Golden Treasury, or Compleat Minor," London, 1698, "being Royal Institutions, or Proposals to Establish and Confirm Laws, Liberties, and Customs of Silver and Gold Mines to all the King's Subjects in such parts of Africa and America which are Now and Shall Be Annexed to and Dependant on the Crown of England;" Pryce's Mineralogia Cornubiensis; “A Treatise on Minerals, Mines, and Mining, containing the Theory and Natural History of Strata, Fissures and Lodes, with the Methods of Discovering and Working Tin, Copper, and Lead Mines;" Henckel's Pyrit ologie; Glauber's works, to whom the world is indebted for the discovery of the compound known as "Glauber Salts"; Delin's Traité des Mines; Bericht von Bergwercken Lohneyez, 1690; Reports on Russian Mines, in the Russian language; Burat's Géologie Appliqué; Combe's Traité des Mines; and Journal des Mines de Russie, 5 vols. 8vo., published at St. Petersburgh, 1835-42, which contains full

descriptions of the mines of Russia, and the machinery used in working them; also, a Description of the Mineral Forges and the Saline Works of the Pyrenees; Villefosse's De la Richesse Minérale; Laws of the Stannaries of Cornwall, Bainbridge's Laws of Mines and Minerals; Collier's Law of Mines; Mining Laws of New Spain; and Opera Mineralia Expli cata, "or the Mineral Kingdom within the Dominions of Great Britain Displayed, being a complete History of the Ancient Corporations of the City of London, of and for the Mines, the Mineral, and the Battery works, with all the Original Grants, Leases, Instruments, &c., and also the Records of the said Mineral Courts, from the Conquest down to the year 1713." This is an exceedingly interesting book. Likewise, a copy of the first lease of the mines to William Humfrey and Christopher Schutz, dated 17th September, VIIth Elizabeth, containing the most extensive mining grants ever given to a British subject.

Of works treating of Coal and Coal-mining, there are Mammalt's Ashley Coal Field, containing plans and sections of coal strata and fossils; Greenwell's Treatise on Mine Engineering; English Parliamentary Reports, on the working and ventilation of coalmines, 7 vols. folio; Hedley, Dunn, Taylor, Smith, Holmes, Sopwith, and Thompson on Coal Mines;

Johnson's Report on American Coals; Hair's Sketches of Coal Mines, &c.; and also the great work of Ponson on Coal Mining, 4 vols. 8vo., and folio atlas of plates one of the most important works on the subject.

Of works on Mineralogy, there are all the editions of Dana's Mineralogy; Molis, Cleaveland, Thomson, Phillips, Nicol, Croustedt, Breithaupt, Brookes, Schmeissers, Konsten, Townson, Henckel, Brongniart, Mongez, Haiiy, Kirwan, Bom, &c.; Sowerby's British Mineralogy, with colored figures of minerals, intended to elucidate the mineralogy of Great Britain, 5 vols. 8vo., most beautifully executed; also, Sowerby's Exotic Mineralogy, with colored fig ures of minerals; Specimens of British Minerals, with colored figures selected from specimens in the cabinet of Philip Rashleigh, of Cornwall; Wulfens, Plumbo, Spatoso, with colored figures of the lead spars of Corinthia, 1791, exceedingly accurate; Bowman on Carbonate of Lime; and Aikin's Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy, 2 vols. 4to.

Of Transactions of Scientific Societies there are the Transactions of the North of England Institute of Mining Engineers; Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society; Geological Society of Cornwall; Records of the School of Mines; Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain; Mining Review; a complete

set of the London Mining Journal; Transactions of the Imperial Mineralogical Society, St. Petersburgh; and of the Lyceum of Natural History, New York. In Geology and Natural History, there is the Natu ral History of the United States Exploring Expedition; Murchison's Russia and the Ural Mountains; De la Beche's Survey of Cornwall: Portlock's Geology of Londonderry; Dixon's Geology of Sussex; Mantell's Geology of Sussex; and the works of Murchison, Lyell, Mantell, and De la Beche. Mr. Wheatley's collection contains all the Geological Surveys of the several states, as far as published, mining reports, plans, and sections of mines.

On the Steam-Engine the collection contains Tredgold's large work; Pole on the Cornish Engine; Wickstead on the Cornish Engine, and Bourne on the Steam Engine.

The specialty to which this collection is devoted is one of the first importance, and gives direction to the employment of a vast amount of capital; yet it is one in which the public libraries are very deficient. It is questionable whether the limited scope afforded by this little library may not place within reach of the geological student a more complete apparatus for investigation than any of the great libraries of New York, accessible to the public.

Mr. Wheatley has also one of the most complete

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