32G HISTORY OF MINERALOGY. 



who have added in this way to the stock of knowledge, would be 

 superfluous. 



Nor need I dwell long en those who added to the knowledge which 

 Ilatiy left, of derived forms. The most remarkable work of this kind 

 was that of Count Bournon, who published a work on a single mineral 

 (calcspar) in three quarto volumes. 3 He has here given representations 

 of seven hundred forms of crystals, of which, however, only fifty-six 

 are essentially different. From this example the reader may judge 

 what a length of time, and what a number of observers and calcula- 

 tors, were requisite to exhaust the subject. 



If the calculations, thus occasioned, had been conducted upon the 

 basis of Hauy's system, without any further generalization, they would 

 have belonged to that process, the natural sequel of inductive discove- 

 ries, which we call deduction ; and would have needed only a very 

 brief notice here. But some additional steps were made in the upward 

 road to scientific truth, and of these we must now give an account. 



CHAPTER IV. 



ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DISTINCTION OF SYSTEMS OF CRYSTALLIZA- 

 TION. WEISS AND MOHS. 



TN Hauy's views, as generally happens in new systems, however true, 

 -L there was involved something that was arbitrary, something that 

 was false or doubtful, something that was unnecessarily limited. The 

 principal points of this kind were; his having made the laws of 

 crystalline derivation depend so much upon cleavage ; his having 

 assumed an atomic constitution of bodies as an essential part of his 

 system ; and his having taken a set of primary forms, which, being 

 selected by no general view, were' partly superfluous, and partly 

 defective.. 



How far evidence, such as has been referred to by various philoso- 

 phers, has proved, or can prove, that bodies are constituted of indivisi- 

 ble atoms, will be more fully examined in the work which treats of 

 the Philosophy of this subject. There can be little doubt that the 



3 Traite complet de la. Chaux Carbonatee et d'Aragonite, par M. le Comte de 

 Bournon. London, 1808. 



