THE NEW MINERALOGY. 663 



AT^rey in the ISTortliwest, was exceptionally severe and occurred 

 during a maximum period. In our daily observation of the sun 

 we watched the spots during the previous summer, and were 

 astonished at their size and number.* 



I can only add that when the expedition starts I hope to be 

 one of the party. If it is organized on the lines I have laid down 

 I should set out with an absolute assurance of getting there, and, 

 what is of still greater importance, with an equal certainty of 

 getting back again. 



-- 



THE NEW MINERALOGY. 



By G. perry GRIMSLEY. 



MINERALOGY, as the observation of minerals, is of very 

 ancient date, but such observation was very crude, for the 

 old scholars grouped under one name a great variety of forms, 

 some rocks and some minerals. The earliest writer was a Greek 

 by the name of Theophrastus, who lived about three hundred years 

 before the Christian era. A few centuries later the great natu- 

 ralist Pliny recorded a number of personal observations. Then 

 followed a blank period extending into the eleventh century, 

 when Avicenna made his mineral classification. In this, the first 

 classification, all minerals were divided into four groups stones 

 (= silicates), salts, inflammable bodies, and earths. In the next 

 six centuries the only improvement was the substitution of term 

 metals for earths. Through all these many years, it was the beau- 

 tiful in form, luster, and color of the gems which attracted the 

 attention of men both learned and ignorant. The question of 

 origin was not considered ; indeed, it was sacrilegious to think of 

 such a problem, since these were objects of creation, whose gene- 

 sis, like that of the gods, was not to be revealed to man. It was 

 the work of many centuries to dispel these clouds of ignorance 

 and superstition which blinded and hindered the advance of this 

 study. The only light which did appear was that of the alche- 



* From a consideration of Schwabe's sun-spot table I am inclined to believe that 

 Parry's three voyages, extending from 1819 to 1825, were undertaken during a minimum 

 period. Schwabe's table, of course, only commences in 1826, but it is certain that the 

 minimum period must have fallen within the above years. On the first voyage Parry sailed 

 completely through Lancaster Sound, which he found a wide and noble channel, clear of ice, 

 and the color of the sea, and there is little doubt that had he possessed a fast steamer he 

 would have made the Northwest passage instead of being forced to winter on Melville Island. 

 Dr. Kane, on the contrary, was out at the close of a maximum period of exceptional length 

 and severity, and he experienced the lowest mean temperature on record. It was during 

 this very same period that the ill-fated Franklin and all with him were lost, the Erebus and 

 Terror being abandoned after nineteen months' imprisonment in the ice. 



