1892.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 49 



January 25th, 1892. 



Stated Meeting. 



Tice-President Dr. Hubbard in the chair. Eighteen persons 

 present. 



The minutes of January 18th were read and approved. 



A letter was read from Dr. John C. Jay, Jr., thanking the 

 Academy for the Resolutions adopted in memory of his father, the 

 late Dr. John C. Jay. 



Dr. Bolton announced that an illustrated lecture would be de- 

 livered l)efore the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences by 

 Prof. Charles V. Riley, Chief of the Division of Entomology, 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture, on Tuesday, March 2d, 1892. 



Insects and flowers ; or, the Interrelations of Insects and Plants. 



Members of the Academy were invited to attend. 



The following paper was then read, entitled 



The Origin and History of Mineralogical Names, 



BY albert H. CHESTER, 



with an exhibition of classical works on Mineralogy. 



The study of mineral names is an interesting one, not only from 

 the mineralogist's point of view, as aifording an insight into the 

 growth and development of this branch of science, but also to the 

 student of human nature, for many ti-aits of character are shown in 

 the various considerations which have determined the particular 

 name to be adopted. 



We sometimes find as a reason for a name the simple idea of dis- 

 tiuffuishina: the thing itself: but this is not the most common reason. 

 To do honor to some person who may perhaps be pleased or flat- 

 tered by the attention, or to immortalize some place, often otherwise 

 obscure or unknown, is a much more common reason. Names have 

 been given to commemorate battle-fields, to sneer at the work of 

 earlier investigators, and as a tribute to feminine loveliness. In 

 short the whole round of human passions has been gone over in the 

 manufacture of these words, which are purely scientific in their 

 uses, and for the making of which scientific methods might well 

 have been employed. The subject has also no little interest from 

 the philological side, and these names deserve study if only as part 



