On Crystallography, ^dl 



field common, Cheshire, on the coal-measures, some in al- 

 luvial marie on Werneth-Low HiJl in Cheshire, (as men* 

 tioned vol. xxxiv. p. 50,) and in vast numbers in the vale 

 of the Goyte from Whaley-hridge downwards, and in its 

 various branches in J)erbyshire and Cheshire: in nu- 

 merous other places, single blocks are found. What I 

 wish to impress on geological observers is, the necessity of 

 stricter attention to alluvial matters, and not hastily to con- 

 clude whether round stones are boulders, or were formed by 

 decomposition. — J. F. 



XLV. On Crystallography, By M, Hauy. Translated 

 from the last Paris Edition ofkis Traite de Mineralogie. 



[Continued from p. 201.] 

 ON THE NOMENCLATURE OF MINERALS. 



JVJiNERALOGY and the other natural sciences have been 

 cultivated during a long course of years, without men of 

 science being aware of the great influence possessed by 

 words, the signs of our ideas, in facilitating the acquisition 

 of their ideas themselves. The language of the sciences 

 was not submitted to any fixed rule; the caprice of the 

 nomenclators themselves decided both the choice and the 

 number of the words which composed each denomination; 

 and these words, frequently improper, or even calculated to 

 lead to a fallacious interpretation, presented the double in- 

 convenience of injuring the operation of the meniory and 

 of obscuring intellectual perceptions. 



At length Linnaeus undertook to make natural history 

 speak a rational and methodical language, by reducing every 

 denomination to two words, one of which should be com- 

 mon to the species denominated, with all those which bcr 

 longed to the same genus, and the other should serve as 

 the distinguishing sign of this species. The example of 

 this illustrious man has been followed by all those who 

 have since cultivated the study of nature with most suc- 

 cess ; and the authors of modern chemistry have adopted 

 a similar precision in the idiom of that science, in which 

 it is conjoined with a peculiar advantage originating from 

 the very basis of the subject. It consists in this, that here, 

 to name and to define are one and the same thing 5 and a mere 

 collection of the names, such as fluate of lime, sulphate 

 of barytcs, &c. presents an abridged treatise on the science. 



R 3 We 



