OP ARTS AND SCIENCES : JANUARY 8, 1867. 239 



relations of these to gravity, cohesion, heat, light, electricity, and mag- 

 netism belong to the domain of physics, while chemistry is the history 

 of their relations to each other, and of their transformations under the 

 influences of heat, light, and electricity. Chemistry is thus to mineral- 

 ogy what biology is to organography, and the abstract sciences, physics 

 and chemistry, must precede and form the basis of the concrete science, 

 mineralogy. Many species are chiefly distinguishable by their chemi- 

 cal activities, and hence chemical characters must be greatly depended 

 upon in mineralogical classification. 



Chemical change implies disorganization, and all so-called chemical 

 species are inorganic, that is to say, unorganized, and hence really be- 

 long to the mineral kingdom. In this extended sense mineralogy takes 

 in not only the few metals, oxides, sulphides, silicates and other salts 

 which are found in nature, but also all those which are the products of 

 the chemist's skill. It embraces not only the few native resins and 

 hydrocarbons, but all the bodies of the carbon series made known to us 

 by the researches of modern chemistry. 



The primary object of a natural classification, it must be remembered, 

 is not, like that of an artificial system, to serve the purpose of detei'- 

 mining species, or the convenience of the student, but so to arrange 

 bodies in genera, orders, and classes as to satisfy most thoroughly nat- 

 ural affinities. Such a classification, in mineralogy, will be based upon 

 a consideration of all the physical and chemical relations of bodies, and 

 will enable us to see that the various properties of a species are not so 

 many arbitrary signs, but the necessary results of its constitution. It 

 will give for the mineral kingdom what the labors of great naturalists 

 have already nearly attained for the vegetable and animal kingdoms. 



Oken saw the necessity of thus enlarging the bounds of mineralogy, 

 and in his Physiophilosophy attempted a mineralogical classification ; 

 but it is based upon fanciful and false analogies, with but little refer- 

 ence either to physical or chemical characters, and in the present state 

 of our knowledge is valueless, except as an effort in the right direc- 

 tion, and an attempt to give to mineralogy a natural system. With 

 similar views as to the scope of the science, and with far higher and 

 juster conceptions of its method, Stallo, in his Philosophy of Nature, 

 has touched the questions before us, and has attempted to show the 

 significance of the relations of the metals to cohesion, gravity, light, and 

 electricity, but has gone no further. 



In approaching this great problem of classification we have to exam- 



