1892.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 55 



fels, a rock, it being commonly found in granites, and not from feld, 

 a field; and hence I write it thus, felspar." This assumption of 

 Kirwan has been taken for fact by all English writers, and the cor- 

 rupt form is in very general use. 



The point most commonly lacking is the reason for adopting the 

 name. Where it is fur some characteristic of the mineral the author 

 often takes it for granted that it is as evident to others as to him- 

 self. The name coracite, Le Conte, Amer. Jour, of Science, ■2d 

 Series, vol. iii, p. 117, is a case in point. Le Conte does not 

 give any derivation, but it is the name of a pitch-black variety of 

 uraninite, and is probably derived from x6pa|, a raven. A similar 

 case is that of adinole ; Beudar.t's Mineralogy, 1832, vol. ii, 

 p. 126. No derivation is given, but it may easily be conjectured 

 from the description that it is from dStj/oj, compact. But there are 

 other cases Avhere there is nothing suggestive in the description, and 

 even conjecture is at fault. Such conjectures if stated as such are 

 of value, but to give them as facts, as has often been done, is cer- 

 tainly a serious blunder, if not something worse. Yet this has 

 often been done. In one of the large dictionaries we find the name 

 acanticone derived as follows: From " Greek dxv;, point, avri, against, 

 and xwvoi, cone." This is a mere guess. The name was given by 

 d'Andra(hi, 1800, Journal de Physique, vol. ii, p. 240, in the form 

 akanthicone, and is derived from dxavdii, a gold-finch, and xona, 

 powder, because the color of the powdered mineral is yellow. A 

 similar blunder is made with the name alvite, so called after one of 

 its localities, Alve, Norway. In the dictionary it is derived from 

 alvus, the belly. Another instance of a mistaken popular deriva- 

 tion is that of coreite, an obsolete synonym of agalmatolite, from 

 the name of the country Corea, probably because agalmatolite is 

 from China, and Corea is close by. The name was given by Dela- 

 metherie in 1795, and he derives it from xoipstoi, of a swine, because 

 of its greasy appearance. He at first calls it koireiite, but changed 

 it to koreiite, and then to koreite, with a k, which has since been 

 changed to c, yivin": the form resembling one derived from the name 

 Corea. But the name ought to be choireiite, commencing with ch. 



Sometimes errors of the compositor have failed of correction, and 

 the changed names have found their way into later books as real 

 ones. One of these is glorikite ; Dufrenoy's Mineralogy, 1859, vol. 

 iii, p. 326, which is an error for glinkite. Gibsonite, in the 1847 

 edition of the same work, vol. iii, p. 761, is probably an error for 

 gibbsite, but this is hot so clear. Galadsite, galadstite, and galad- 

 tite are all printer's errors for galaktite. 



A curious case of this sort is seen in the various forms of the word 

 didymite. It was announced by Schaufhautl in 1843 from 5(,'6v;uo5, a 

 twin, because it was thought to be a second silicate containing cal- 

 cium carbonate as part of its composition. The form was l)y some 

 blunder given as didrimite, but this was soon changed by the author 

 himself to the correctly derived form, didymite, the original i being 



