388 Analyses of Books. [Mxy, 



number of minerals is almost daily increasing, and when every 

 discoverer of a new locality is givmg a fresh name to a mineral 

 -which to him may be new, although others may be well 

 acquainted with it, a work, hke the present, must be deemed of 

 great importance, as enabhng mineralogists to decide upon the 

 nature ot a specimen without having recourse to a tedious, and 

 frequently unsuccessful, analysis. 



In o person could be selected from among the numerous philo- 

 sophers of which the present day has to boast, who is better 

 calculated than Berzelius for the task which he has undertaken* 

 We fully concur in the statement of the translator, " that the 

 name of Berzelius, as a skilful and patient experimenter, stand* 

 almost unrivalled ;" and that the present essay, although occa- 

 sionally obscured and perplexed by his pecuhar hypothetical 

 notions, " amply vindicates his claim to the high reputation he 

 has acquired." 



The use of the blowpipe cannot be more clearly or better 

 described than in the author's introduction. " In the analysis 

 of inorganic substances, the use of the blowpipe," he observes, 

 " is indispensable. By means of this instrument, we can subject 

 portions of matter, too small to be weighed, to all the trials 

 necessary to demonstrate their nature, and it frequently even 

 detects the presence of substances not sought for nor expected 

 in the body under examination. The facility thiat it affords for 

 discovering the constituent parts of metallic fossils, renders it 

 equally indispensable for the miner, whose common processes are 

 sometimes singularly disturbed by the occurrence of foreign 

 substances in the minerals he operates on, and whose nature, for 

 -want of time or skill, he can but seldom ascertain by sufficiently 

 elaborate and delicate chemical experiments, but which the ready 

 and convenient use of the blowpipe enables him to develope in a 

 few seconds. To the mineralogist, this instrument is absolutely 

 necessary, as his only resource for immediately ascertaining if 

 the inference he draws from external characters, such as form, 

 colour, hardness, &c. be legitimate." 



With respect to his work, Berzelius remarks, that it is " a 

 system of chemical experiments, made in the dry way, as it 

 used to be called, and almost always on a microscopic scale, but 

 which presents us in an instant with a decisive result." He 

 "has evidently been at great pains in selecting the specimens upon 

 which he operated, having been supplied with them by Haiiy, 

 Bournon, Gillet de Laumont, Brongmart, Brochant, and other 

 names well-known to mineralogists of every country. 



In his historical sketch of the blowpipe, Berzelius refers 

 to Gahn, who, he assures us, attained to such a degree of 

 skill in its use, that he could detect the presence of substances 

 in a body by its means, which had escaped the most carfeful 

 analyses, conducted in the moist way. " Thus," says Berzelius,' 

 *' when Ekfeberg asked his opinion respecting the 'oxiidie of 



