Excerpt from A d104book of Fire Assaying This book is the outgrowth of a set of mimeograph notes prepared in 1911 and intended for use in the course in fire assaying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The mimeograph notes were succeeded by a book of 150 pages published by the author in 1915. The present volume has been revised and enlarged and is offered as a small contribution toward the scientific explanation of the ancient art of fire assaying. It contains some hitherto unpublished results of research, as well as considerable new data derived from a careful search of all the available literature, none of which have previously appeared in book form. Although intended primarily as a college textbook, it is not entirely elementary in character and it is hoped that it will be found sufficiently complete and fundamental to be of service to the more mature student of the science. Every effort has been made to avoid the old cook-book method of presentation so common in books of this kind and to give the underlying scientific reasons for the many phenomena which occur, as well as the rationale of each process and detail of manipulation. The object of instruction in fire assaying should not be merely the training of students to obtain results of a certain degree of precision by blindly following some set procedure, as is unfortunately too often the case. On the contrary, their attention should be focussed on the physical and chemical principles which govern the various operations. If they truly understand the reasons for the use of each of the reagents and for the various details of technique, they will not have to hunt over the pages of a receipt book when confronted by an ore of unfamiliar constitution, but will be able to make up their own assay charges and outline their own details of manipulation. The author believes that a course in fire assaying is the logical place to introduce the study of metallurgy. The study of general metallurgy, which is abstract and uninteresting by itself, is made concrete and intensely interesting if the various processes of fire Assaying are used to illustrate its principles. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.