54 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [jAN. 25, 



those of the elements and a very few more, shall uniformly end in 

 -ite, and that the termination -ine shall as uniformly be used for all 

 variety names, and those whose specific character is not fully settled. 

 Accordingly, he gives us gypsite, serpentite, wadite, orthoclasite, 

 spodumenite, epidotite and many similar changes, while marmolite, 

 picrolite, nacrite, and others are made to end in -ine, marmoline, 

 picroline, nacrine. It is hardlv necessarv to sav that these suo-"'es- 

 tions have not been generally or fully accepted. 



With reference to a considerable number of names the full infor- 

 mation wanted is not easy to obtain, and in some cases perhaps it 

 cannot be found at all. When it is not given in Dana's Mineralogy 

 the student may be sure that he will have to hunt to find it. This 

 is particularly true of obsolete names, information about which must 

 be sought in the earlier volumes of scientific journals. 



The first publication of Taylor's came killinite is in 1818, in vol. 

 xiii, p. 4, of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, a fact 

 not stated in any work on mineralogy, as far as I have examined 

 them. There are some names also about which very erroneous 

 ideas as to derivation prevail, and which need correction. The name 

 chabazite was given in the form chabasie, by Bosc d'Antic, in IT 80, 

 Journal d'Histoire Naturelle, vol. ii, p. 181, and is derived from 

 xajSd^LOi, the name given to one of the stones mentioned in the 

 Orphic poem iifpt.' ■kiOov. The name as we now have it in the poem 

 is x^-T^a^'-oi, and the mineral should therefore have been called chala- 

 zite. Kidd called attention to the blunder in 1809, Kidd's Min- 

 eralogy, vol. i, p. 249; but the original name has held its place. 

 It is but fair to say that the form ;^a,3a'?to5 was used in the current 

 editions of the poem cit the time the name was applied. The deriva- 

 tion of the word datholite has often been incorrectly given. It is 

 really a corruption of the original name datolith, given by Esmark 

 in 1800, from Sdtiofiai, to divide, and ^iOo^, alluding to the granular 

 structure of one of its varieties. Werner added the h for no appa- 

 rent reason, and the changed form was adopted by most authors 

 until Prof. Dana unriddled the matter and gave it its correct form 

 again. But wise writers have tried to find another derivation for 

 it, and one author of note says it is from bdOoi, which he says means 

 turbid, because the mineral is not clear and transparent. Another 

 wi.ser one says there is no such Greek word as 6a9oj, which is true, 

 and that it is from the compound word 8a-9oxxoj, meaning very tur- 

 bid, which is no more a proper derivation than the other. The 

 word feldspar has been changed into felspar for no better reason 

 than that the latter form was thought the right one. It was used 

 by Wallerius in his Mineralogy of 1747, p. 65, in the Swedish form 

 felt-spat, meaning field-spar. It did not originate with him probably, 

 but may have been a po])ular name in his time. Da Costa used 

 it in 1757, in the German form fcld-spath, and this form was cur- 

 rent until 1794, when we find, in Kirwan's Mineralogy, vol. i, 

 p. 817, the following note: "This name seems to be derived from 



