Item #16802 Geology and Industrial Resources of California, To Which is Added the Official Reports of Genls. Persifer F. Smith and B. Riley--Including the Reports of Lieuts. Talbot, Ord, Derby and Williamson, of their Explorations in California and Oregon; and also of their Examinations of Routes for Rail Road Communication Eastward from those Countries. CALIFORNIA, Philip Thomas Tyson.
Geology and Industrial Resources of California, To Which is Added the Official Reports of Genls. Persifer F. Smith and B. Riley--Including the Reports of Lieuts. Talbot, Ord, Derby and Williamson, of their Explorations in California and Oregon; and also of their Examinations of Routes for Rail Road Communication Eastward from those Countries
Geology and Industrial Resources of California, To Which is Added the Official Reports of Genls. Persifer F. Smith and B. Riley--Including the Reports of Lieuts. Talbot, Ord, Derby and Williamson, of their Explorations in California and Oregon; and also of their Examinations of Routes for Rail Road Communication Eastward from those Countries

Geology and Industrial Resources of California, To Which is Added the Official Reports of Genls. Persifer F. Smith and B. Riley--Including the Reports of Lieuts. Talbot, Ord, Derby and Williamson, of their Explorations in California and Oregon; and also of their Examinations of Routes for Rail Road Communication Eastward from those Countries

Baltimore: Wm. Minifie & Co., 1851.

Hardcover. Very good. Second and preferred edition, with the addition of a 34-page introduction (first issued as a Senate document in 1850). Original boards, rebacked with new cloth spine. Complete with 3 folding maps and 9 folding plates (a few with minor marginal chips or tears). Binding sound, text clean. Based on a four-month stay in California, this was one of the earliest works of scientific value to emerge from the California gold rush. Very little was known about the region's geology at the time gold was discovered, and the demand for information was significant. Tyson "described the western flank of the Sierras as consisting of a vast mass of metamorphic and hypogene rocks stretching from the Sacramento Valley to the axis of the mountains. The metamorphic rocks, mainly slates, contained the veins of auriferous quartz, through the breaking down of which has been derived the gold found in the gravels of the ravines" (Merrill, Contributions to the History of American Geology). According to Merrill, in his eagerness to counterbalance wildly exaggerated claims about the richness of the mines, Tyson actually underestimated their value, warning that "the chances were almost wholly against [the veins] containing gold in proportion that would pay expenses." Kurutz 643b; Howes T-455, Cowan p. 648.

Item #16802

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