It seems that a passenger, who had come in on the same coach that brought in the superintendent's letter, had casually dropped the remark to the director that Smith had put a sump in the "Endomile," and the director had lit out for a dictionary without loss of time, so that when the two great miners got together, they were both proud and confident. Each was proud because he knew what a sump was, and confident that the other one didn't know. MINING AS A SCIENCE |THE study of mining as a science is one which brings with it a quiet joy, which the novice knows nothing of. In Morrison's Mining Eights we find the following: "If all classes of lode deposits are to be regarded as legally identical, it follows that where a vein is pinched for a considerable distance, it is lost to the owner; if its apex is found in the slide, it can not be located as a lode. "The distinction which would relieve these points would be to allow the dip to such lodes Only as have a _perpendicular base_ and are not on the nature of _stratigraphical deposits!_ all the inconsistencies apparent from the previous paragraph are the sequence to any other ruling. "If it be alleged that such holdings are not applicable to fissure veins, at once a distinction is made between the two classes of veins in their consideration under the act; and if a single distinction in their legal status be admitted, no reason can be alleged against further distinctions with reference to their essential points at difference." How, few who have not toiled over the long and wearisome works upon mining as a legal branch of human knowledge, would care a cold, dead clam, whether such lodes as have perpendicular bases, or those which have stratigraphical deposits, are to be allowed under the law in relation to pinched out or intersecting veins. But to the student, whose whole life is wrapped up in the investigation of this beautiful mystery, these logical sequences break upon his mind with a beautiful effulgence that fills him with unstratified and purely igneous or nomicaseous joy. Reading farther in the thrilling work, above referred to, we find this little garland of fragrant literary wood violets: "Another point to be guarded against in the conveyance of a segregated portion of a claim on a fissure vein, is, that a line drawn at right angles to the side lines at the surface, and which is intended as the dividing fine between the part retained and the part sold, may, when carried vertically downward, cut off the vein on its dip in such a way as to divide it, for instance, at the surface. It begins 'at the west end of discovery shaft,' it may leave the bottom of such shaft entirely in the west fraction of the lode within a comparatively few feet of sinking. Such result, or a similar result, will invariably occur where the vein has a dip, unless the end lines are at an exact right angle to the strike of the vein."