Structure of Hydrothermal Ore Deposits

About the turn of this century interest in economic geology had reached a high level in North America. The thoughtful paper in 1893 by J. H. L. Vogt, of Norway, on injected igneous deposits derived from an igneous source by the process of magmatic differentiation, which was also advanced to account for hot mineralizing waters, drew attention once more to the earlier ideas of Elie de Beaumont. Then came the classical paper by Franz Posepny on "The Genesis of Ore Deposits" delivered before the American Institute of Mining Engineers in Chicago in 1893. This created a profound impression on American thought and stimulated a heated controversial discussion by S. F. Emmons, Van Hise, J. F. Kemp, Waldemar Lindgren, and W. H. Weed in the years 1901 to 1903, on the respective merits of heated meteoric waters versus hot juvenile waters in the genesis of ore deposits. In 1901 also came the startling new concept of secondary sulfide enrichment proposed by S. F. Emmons, Van Hise and W. H. Weed. These papers and discussions resulted in the Posepny Volume on The Genesis of Ore Deposits sponsored in 1901 by the American Institute of Mining Engineers. Geologists were rocked by the influx of new concepts and ideas bearing on the genesis of ore deposits. A forum was needed where prevailing ideas could be thrashed out and new ones presented. An idea was breeding that was shortly to give rise to another new concept—a journal of economic geology in the English language.