1892.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 51 



natural science, but none of them have been generally adopted, and 

 all have by degrees been dropped. One of the earliest of these was 

 by Sir John Hill, in his History of Fossils, 1748. He divides min- 

 erals into nQmbered series, classes, and orders, and under these into 

 named genera and species. His genus names are many of them 

 new, but are sometimes older names modified to suit his system. 

 For instance, Marmora, for the marbles. A good example of his 

 new names, and also of the way in which species were multiplied, 

 when only external characteristics were considered, is in the order 

 of inflammables. The 3d class is called Phlogonite, and under this 

 we have as the 1st Genus, Pyricubia, and under this two species — 



1st. Pyricubium maximum foliaceum, and 



2d. Pyricubium solidum minus. 



The first of these species is simply cubical crystals of iron pyrites, 

 striated by oscillation toward a heml-tetrahexahedron, and the 

 second is the unstriated crystals of the same. Octahedral pyrite is 

 made another genus, and dodecahedral is still another. Several 

 more genera are made from what is now the one species. This 

 system never came into general use, and Hill himself gives it up 

 and adopts one much more simple in his later work, 1771. 



In 1820 Prof. Mohs brought out a small book entitled " The 

 Characters of the Classes, Orders, Genera, and Species; or the 

 Characteristic of the Natural History System of Mineralogy. 

 Intended to enable students to discriminate minerals on principles 

 similar to those of Botany and Geology." This system is more 

 fully presented in his larger work of 1822-24, translated by Hai- 

 dinger in 1825. He uses genus and species names for each 

 mineral, and sometimes adds a third for more careful distinction. 

 Under the genus garnet he gives Pyramidal Garnet, or idocrase ; 

 Dodecahedral Garnet, or true garnet, and Prismatoidal Garnet, or 

 staurolite. Dioptase becomes Rhombohedral Emerald-Malachite, 

 This system was quite popular for a time, and had several imita- 

 tors. Prof. C. U. Shepard adopts Mohs's system, and in the first 

 edition of his mineralogy, 1832-5, he not only uses his names, but 

 extends the system still further. He, however, gives the common, 

 or trivial name as it is called first, and always uses them in speaking 

 of the species. Microlite is the one new species of his own noted in 

 this book, which under the system he calls Octahedral Tungstic- 

 Baryte, and similar names are carried all the way through. None 

 of these names are mentioned in his third edition, 1852-7. 



In 1836, Prof. J. D. Dana read a paper before the New York 

 Lyceum of Natural History, entitled "A New Mineral Nomencla- 

 ture," in which he presents a complete arrangement according to 

 the Natural History method, and gives some very good reasons for 

 its adoption. This system is carried out in full in the first edition, 

 1837, of his great work on Mineralogy. He uses in general two 

 names for each mineral, as Andalusius prismaticus for andalusite, 

 but he gives the common name first in all ca.ses. In his second 



