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 numbered 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 Phlogoniw, and under this 
we have as the Ist Genus, Pyricubia, and under this two species— 
Ist. 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 hemi-tetrahexahedron, and the 
second is the unstriated erystals 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 cases. In his second 
