CHEOMITE AND PICOTITE. 185 



tine, pyroxenes, aniphiboles, and in almost every mineral or group of minerals 

 that has been studied to a sufficient extent to afford us much information 

 about its composition. Our minerals in Nature's laboratory appear to be 

 produced and grow, to change and decay, to pass away and be succeeded by 

 others, ever passing onward from the unstable towards the more stable ; re- 

 action after reaction, replacement after replacement, following one another 

 according to the varying conditions, as they do in the chemist's laboratory. 

 When we can learn the order of succession by alteration, and the various 

 relations minerals thus hold to one another, we may hope for a natural sys- 

 tem of mineralogy, which will display to us their origin and line of descent, 

 with their relationships. In the establishment of such a system, the micro- 

 scope and chemical reagents must go hand in hand, and the work is yet 

 hardly begun. 



An analysis of a chromite from Roraas, Norway, given in Table I., has had 

 a strange history. It was attributed to Laugier by Eammelsberg in his 

 Handwiirterbuch des chemischen Theils der Mineralogie, 1841, pp. 163, 104, 

 and in his Handbuch der Mineralchemie, 1860, pp. 171-174 ; and from these 

 works of Eammelsberg it has been copied in the third, fourth, and fifth 

 editions of Dana's System of Mineralogy, and elsewhere. The work from 

 which the analysis is said to have been taken is the sixth volume of the Ann. 

 Mus. d'Hist. Nat. It was proved by the present writer not to occur there, 

 and after a long search, its history has been found to be as follows: — 



The analysis was published in the Annales des Mines, 1829 (2), V. 316, 

 as taken from the " An. du Bureau des mines de Suede, t. 9, 1825," but the 

 name of the analyst was not given. Since the writer is unable to see, for 

 the present at least, the Swedish journal referred to, the analysis has not 

 been traced any further backwards. It was then copied by Beudant,* 

 together with an analysis of Seybert, but in both cases without mention of 

 the analyst or the source. Before this, however, it had been republished by 

 Franz von Kobell,t without being attributed to any analyst, and without 

 reference to the original source, but placed after a reference to an analysis 

 by Laugier. This then evidently gave rise to Rammelsberg's mistake ; while 

 it also led Hausmann t and Brooke-and-Miller§ to attribute the analysis to Von 

 Kobell himself, as tliey have done in their mineralogies. Thus this analysis 



* Traite elementaire de Mineralogie, 1832, ii. G07, GG8. 

 t Charaktcristik dor Miueralicii, 1S31, ii. 255. 

 J Handbuch der Jlineralogie, 181-7, ii. 4-20. 



§ An Elementary lutroductiou to Mineralogy, by tlie late William Phillips, 1852, p. 2G3. 



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