382 MEMOIR OF HAUY. 



since professor at Abo, had likewise remarked that in breaking a crystal 

 of pyramidal spar its nucleus was a rhomboid similar to Iceland spar, 

 and he had communicated this observation to his master, the celebrated 

 Bergman, who would have been thought capable of following it into 

 all its consequences. Bu£ in place of extending it to different crystals, 

 and thus ascertaining by experiment within what limits the fact might 

 be generalized,, Bergman launched into hypothesis and lost his way 

 from the outset. From the observed rhomboid of spar he pretended to 

 deduce not only the other crystals of spar, but those of the garnet # and 

 hyacinth^ which have no conformity of structure. Thus, a savant of 

 the first order, a proficient in physics and geometry, bewildered him- 

 self in the path to a great discovery, and left it to be made by a man 

 who was scarcely beginning to occupy himself with science, but who 

 knew how to pursue truth as Nature wills it to be pursued ; in proceed- 

 ing step by step, observing without remission, and not suffering oneself 

 to be carried away or turned aside by the imagination. 



The mineralogists, however, who had been unable to find the right 

 way, now, from the same cause, proved themselves as little capable of 

 perceiving how far that of Bergman diverged from it, and they charged 

 Haiiy with borrowing Bergman's ideas — Haiiy, who scarcely knew the 

 name of Bergman, and had certainly never seen his memoir. They 

 added, as is always done on similar occasions, that not only was the 

 discovery not Haiiy's, but that it w r as false. 



Rome Delisle, a mineralogist, not otherwise without merit, but who 

 had long been occupied with crystals without once suspecting the prin- 

 ciple of their structure, had the weakness to deny it when discovered 

 by another. He amused himself with calling Haiiy a erystalloclasi, as 

 the breakers of images were called iconoclasts under the Lower Empire. 

 Bui happily we know no heretics in science except those who do not 

 choose to follow the progress of their age; and it is Rome Delisle him- 

 self, and others actuated by similar jealousies, who must be referred to 

 the class of the perverse and contumacious. 



The only response of Haiiy to his detractors consisted in new re- 

 searches, and a still more fruitful application of them. As yet, he had 

 but given the solution of a curious problem in physics; his further ob- 

 servations were destined to furnish indications of the highest import- 

 ance to mineraiogy. 



In his numerous experiments upon the spars, he had remarked that 

 the stone called pearl spa?', which till then had been regarded as a va- 

 riety of the heavy spar, or sulphate of bavytes, has the same nucleus 

 with the calcareous spars; and his analysis proved that, like theur, it 

 consists only of carbonated lime. 



If minerals, he reasoned, well ascertained as to their species and com- 

 position, have each a determinate nucleus and constituent molecule, the 

 same must be the case with all the minerals distinguished by nature 

 whose composition is not yet known. For the distinction of substances, 

 then, this nucleus or molecule may supply the place of their composi- 

 tion; and from the first application of this idea he was enabled to carry 

 light into a part of the science which all the labors of his predecessors 

 had failed to make clear. 



At this epoch, the most expert mineralogists, Linnaeus, Wallerius, 



