312 HISTORY OF MINERALOGY. 



almost imagine," Cuvier says, 4 " that when he had produced his nomen- 

 clature of external characters, he was affrighted with his own creation , 

 and that the reason of his writing so little after his first essay, was to 

 avoid the shackles which he had imposed upon others." His system 

 was, indeed, made known both in and out of Germany, by his pupils ; 

 but in consequence of Werner's unwillingness to give it on his own 

 authority, it assumed, in its published forms, the appearance of an 

 extorted secret imperfectly told. A Notice of the Mineralogical Cabi- 

 net of Mine-Director Pabst von Ohain, was, in 1792, published by 

 Karsten and Hoffman, under Werner's direction ; and conveyed by 

 example, his views of mineralogical arrangement; and 6 in 1816 his 

 Doctrine of Classification was surreptitiously copied from his manu- 

 script, and published in a German Journal, termed The Hesperus. But 

 it was only in 1817, after his death, that there appeared Werner's Last 

 Mineral System, edited from his papers by Breithaupt and Kohler : 

 and by this time, as we shall soon see, other systems were coming 

 forwards on the stage. 



A very slight notice of Werner's arrangement will suffice to show 

 that it was, as we have termed it, a Mixed System. He makes four 

 great Classes of fossils, Earthy, Saline, Combustible, Metallic : the 

 earthy fossils are in eight Genera Diamond, Zircon, Silica, Alumina, 

 Talc, Lime, Baryta, Hallites. It is clear that these genera are in the 

 main chemical, for chemistry alone can definitely distinguish the dif- 

 ferent Earths which characterize them. Yet the Wernerian arrange- 

 ment supposed the distinctions to be practically made by reference to 

 those external characters which the teacher himself could employ with 

 such surpassing skill. And though it cannot be doubted, that the 

 chemical views which prevailed around him had a latent influence on 

 his classification in some cases, he resolutely refused to bend his system 

 to the authority of chemistry. Thus, 8 when he was blamed for having, 

 in opposition to the chemists, placed diamond among the earthy fossils, 

 he persisted in declaring that, mineralogically considered, it was a 

 stone, and could not be treated as anything else. 



This was an indication to that tendency, which, under his successor, 

 led to a complete separation of the two grounds of classification. But 

 before we proceed to this, we must notice what was doing at this 

 period in other parts of Europe. 



Hatty's System. Though Werner, on his own principles, ought to 



4 Cuv. El. ii. 314. 6 Frisch. p. 52, 6 Frisch. p. 62. 



