No. 6.] BRUSH — AMERICAN MINERALOGY. 800 



gation is needed to ascertain what they are. Among these new 

 minerals are some of great interest to science. Time, however, 

 will not allow, even if your patience would permit me, to give the 

 facts in detail ; but in justice to the describersof those anuouuced 

 to be new, I will priut, as an appendix to this address, as com- 

 plete a list as I have been able to make- of the names of the pro- 

 posed new American mineral species, with the names of their 

 sponsors. The list will, I trust, be instructive both as a warning 

 and an encourauement to investigators. The ambition to make 

 new species is recognized as a drawback in every department of 

 vscience, and mineralogy has probably not suffered in this respect 

 more than other sciences. Nor do I believe that x\mericau 

 mineralogists have, as a class, been less careful in describing new 

 species than their European confreres. There have been flagrant 

 examples of carelessness in both hemispheres, and the growing- 

 tendency during the last ten or fifteen years to call things new 

 which have been only imperfectly investigated cannot be too 

 strongly censured. ''If two very simple rules,"' says a recent 

 writer, ''could be conscientiously followed by those investigating 

 supposed new mineral species, the science of mineralogy would be 

 vastly benefitted. These are : first, that the material analyzed, 

 should in every case be proved by a careful microscopical and 

 chemical examination to be homogenous; and second, that thr. 

 thorough investigation which is to establish the position of a 'now 

 species' should precede, not follow, the giving of a new name. A 

 mineral which can be only partially described does not deserve a 

 name." In comparing the minerals found in America vrith those 

 of Europe, although interesting minor variations are observed, it 

 can hardly be expected that very marked differences should exist. 

 This is, of course, due to the fact, that in the inorganic kingdom, 

 nature has everywhere to do with the same elements, under es- 

 sentially like conditions. A large number of remarkable analo- 

 gies between the minerals of the two continents will occur to any 

 one familiar with the subject, as, for example, the character and 

 the occurrence of individual minerals in the rocks of the north- 

 eastern United States and Canada as compared with those of 

 Norway and Sweden, and numberless instances of like association 

 of minerals in various parts of Europe find their counterparts 

 here. A marked feature of the American minerals is the grand 

 scale upon which crystallization has taken place, individual crys- 

 tals of larsfe size being verv common. The granite veins of New 



