as a Branch of Natural History^ cj-c. • i 211 



I. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



§ 1. The two prominent points in which the superiority in 

 the methods of the natural history of organized beings over 

 those of the inorganic kingdom shows itself most conspicuously, 

 independent of the greater interest which is naturally attached 

 to living beings provided with numerous and infinitely varied 

 organs, each of which is admirably adapted to the conservation 

 or reproduction of the species, are the following. 



§ 2. 1^/, It enables the student, in all cases, even in the na- 

 tural method, which disclaims every attempt to facilitate the 

 discovery of the name of a being, to find out, after having ac- 

 quired the knowledge of the organs, the name and place in the 

 method of any animal or vegetable individual, and that without 

 any other auxiliary but a treatise on zoology or botany ; that 

 such a thing cannot be accomplished with any work on mi- 

 neralogy, that of Mohs excepted, is well known to all who 

 have attempted to study that science by the aid of books alone. 

 The very entrance into a system of mineralogy is impracticable, 

 because the first divisions are generally founded upon characters 

 which by their very nature are never enumerated among the 

 mineralogical characters, and in many cases cannot be ascer- 

 tained. Not to speak of the divisions in Werner's and in 

 Haiiy's first system, which presupposed a knowledge not only 

 of the component parts of a mineral, but of the mode of com- 

 bination of these elements, while chemical analysis was not even 

 mentioned as a mineralogical character ; we ask, how is a stu- 

 dent to proceed, when, with a mineralogical specimen in his 

 hand, and after having carefully studied the mineralogical cha- 

 racters in his book, he comes as a zoologist or a botanist would 

 do, with an animal or a plant, to ask the author to lead him by 

 gradual definition to the name of the mineral; and when he 

 finds that he has to determine, in the first place, whether his 

 mineral belongs to the class of autopside or of hetei'opside me- 

 tals, to those of electro-positive^ or electro-negative metals, or to 

 leucolytes, gazolites^ or chrdicolites, for which determination 

 the most profound chemical researches, the use of the voltaic 



p 2 



