Rutley's elements of mineralogy has been around for a long time, certainly throughout my own lifetime; and if my great grandfather had read geology, it would have been prescribed reading for him too It has been rewritten and revised frequently since fir t conceived by Frank Rutley in the late 19th century. Major revisions occurred in 1902, and then in 1914, when H. H. Read first took over the authorship, and thereafter in 1936 and in 1965 when the last major changes occurred. It was with some trepidation that I agreed to attempt this revision. I had been asked to do it by Janet Watson in...

This book is the successor to A practical introduction to optical mineralogy, which was written in the early 1980s, and published by George Allen & Unwin in 1985. Our intention, once again, is to introduce the student of geology to the microscopic examination of minerals, by both transmitted and reflected light. These techniques should be mastered by students early in their careers, and this text has been proposed in the full awareness that it will be used as a laboratory handbook, serving as a quick reference to the properties of minerals. However, care has been taken to present a systematic...