THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 

 PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



On Mineralogy considered as a Branch of Natural History, 

 and Outlines of an Arrangement c)f Minerals founded on 

 the principles of the Natural Method of Classification. By 

 L. A. Necker, Honorary Professor of Mineralogy and Geo- 

 logy in the Academy of Geneva, &c. Communicated by 

 the Author. 



J. HE present short and very incomplete communication, is in- 

 tended merely as a cursory sketch of the chief leading prin- 

 ciples of a plan for the classification of minerals, differing entire- 

 ly from any systematic arrangement hitherto proposed, inas- 

 much as, in the view we intend taking of the subject, Minera- 

 logy is considered as a branch of natural history, and made to 

 submit, not to the arbitrary and unphilosophical arrangements 

 of an artificial system, but to the laws of the natural method of 

 classification, as exemplified and illustrated in the other two 

 branches of natural history, Zoology and Botany, in the classical 

 works of Cuvier and De Candolle. 



Having had repeated opportunities of hearing the principles 

 of the natural method developed by the philosopher himself, 

 who has been the first to analyze them, and to give them a phi- 

 losophical form, in his admirable TJieoric elementaire de Botar- 

 nique, and, at the same time, of seeing the application of these 

 sound principles, as given by the same author (De Candolle) in 

 his lectures on botany and zoology, I was forcibly struck with 

 the sad inferiority in which mineralogy stood in regard to its 

 two sister sciences. 



JANUARY MAKCH 18S2. P 



