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xxvi. mines, and the fortunes of many kings have been much amplified thereby. But I will not now speak more of these matters, because I have dealt with these subjects partly in the first book of this work, and partly in the other work entitled De Veteribus el Novis Metallis, where I have refuted the charges which have been made against metals and against miners.

Now, though the art of husbandry, which I willingly rank with the art of mining, appears to be divided into many branches, yet it is not separated into so many as this art of ours, nor can I teach the principles of this as easily as Columella did of that. He had at hand many writers upon husbandry whom he could follow, in fact, there are more than fifty Greek authors whom Marcus Varro enumerates, and more than ten Latin ones, whom Columella himself mentions. I have only one whom I can follow; that is C. Plinius Secundus, and he expounds only a very few methods of digging ores and of making metals. Far from the whole of the art having been treated by any one writer, those who have written occasionally on any one or another of its branches have not even dealt completely with a single one of them. Moreover, there is a great scarcity even of these, since alone of all the Greeks, Strato of Lampsacus, the successor of Theophrastus, wrote a book on the subject, De Machinis Metallicis; except, perhaps a work by the poet Philo, a small part of which embraced to some degree the occupation of mining. Pherecrates seems to have introduced into his comedy, which was similar in title, miners as slaves or as persons condemned to serve in the mines. Of the Latin writers, Pliny, as I have already said, has described a few methods of working. Also among the authors I must include the modern writers, whosoever they are, for no one should escape just condemnation who fails to award due recognition to persons whose writings he uses, even very slightly. Two books have been written in our tongue; the one on the assaying of mineral substances and metals, somewhat confused, whose author is unknown ; the other “On Veins,” of which Pandulfus Anglus is also said to have written, although the German book was written by Calbus of Freiberg, a well-known doctor; but neither of them accomplished the task