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TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
In writing De Natura Fossilium and other works on geology and mining Agricola found difficulty in expressing himself adequately in Latin, a language that had not expanded with the renaissance of learning. In the field of the new sciences of mineralogy and mining geology many new German and English technical terms had come into common use in the mining districts without the development of Latin counterparts. Con­sequently he was compelled to use older Latin words in strange contexts and to create new words. In many passages one must assume the shade of meaning implied by rather vague expressions and words.
Editing has been reduced to a minimum. Where Agricola departs from the more common spelling of mineral and proper names his spelling has been retained when there is no evidence of misprinting. Examples are Euax, Zactalias, glessum and several others. In general the Latin locality names have been retained.
Where possible modern equivalents of mineral names have been sub­stituted for the Latin. The latter are retained where identification is questionable, or where they clarify the text. No effort has been made to quote other authorities or to give a comprehensive review of available background material. Footnotes have been used sparingly, primarily to clarify the text.
Although the second edition of this work, published three years after Agricola's death, is larger, the first edition was selected for translation and the two texts are not compared. In our opinion the first edition of any scientific work that represents an outstanding advance in learning is usually better suited than later and revised editions for evaluating the stature of the author and the plane of knowledge at the time the work was first written. This translation has been made with the sole objective of presenting in English the first textbook of mineralogy, a work that has been considered by Adams1 as marking "the dawn of the Renaissance in the Geological sciences."
1 Op. cit., p. 56.
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