1892. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 53 
were given to minerals as the result of more extended research in 
this branch of study, and one of the first of these was prehnite, 
given by Werner to a mineral brought from the Cape of Good Hope 
by Colonel Prehn, and hence named after him. Werner first an- 
nounced the name in his lectures in 1783, as he himself states later, 
but it was not published for several years. In 1789 there is an 
article in the Journal de Physique, by Sage, objecting to the use of 
names of persons for minerals, the text for which is this name of 
Werner’s. But the name has kept its place, and is now the accepted 
one for the species. Other names, given about the same time after 
persons, are Witherite, after Dr. Withering, who first described it, 
and torberite, later changed to torbernite, after Torbern Bergmann, 
its firstanalyst. This latter mineral has gone through various vicis- 
situdes as to its name, and a list of them, as an illustration, may not 
be out of place here. I take them from the 5th edition of Dana’s Min- 
eralogy, p. 585; Mica viridis, 1772; Chalkolith, 1788; Torberite, 
1793; Uranglimmer, 1800; Torbernit, 1803; Uranite, 1814; Uran- 
phyllit, 1820; Copper Uranite (no date) ; Cuprouranit, 1865. 
My study of the history of mineral names was begun in the in- 
terest of Murray’s English Dictionary, where these names are con- 
sidered as words simply, and part of the language, as found in 
books. The information sought with reference to each is Ist, the 
author of the name; 2d, date of first publication; 3d, reference to 
original publication ; 4th, first form, if different from the form now 
used by English writers; 5th, derivation ; 6th, reason for the name; 
Tth, a short description, sufficient to identify it, particularly if the 
name has been used for more than one species or variety. 
A good example is Erinite, a name given by Haidinger, 1828, 
Annals of Philosophy, 2d series, vol. iv, p. 154, from Erin, because 
it was supposed to have been found in Ireland. It is a green, 
fibrous, arseniate of copper. This description is necessary, and suffi- 
cient to distinguish it from Erinite of Thompson, 1836, Thompson’s 
Mineralogy, vol. i, p. 342, derived also from Erin, for the same 
reason, and properly so, for it came from Ireland. But this is a 
reddish, clay-like mineral from the Giant’s Causeway, and probably 
does not merit a name at all. Full information about the majority 
of the names is easily obtained, and is usually to be found in the 
last edition of Dana’s Mineralogy, up to 1892. In his 5th edition 
Prof. Dana makes an attempt at uniformity of nomenclature by 
changing the terminations of many of them into -ite, particularly 
those ending in -ine, only leaving those unchanged which had come 
into too general use in the language to be so treated. So we have 
galenite, alabandite, pyrrhotite, and periclasite, instead of galena, 
alabandine, pyrrhotine, and periclase. These changes have been 
generally adopted, and are all in the right direction. 
In 1876 Prof. Shepard published a ‘‘ Catalogue of Minerals found 
within about 75 miles of Amherst College, Mass.,’’ in which he pro- 
posed that the names of all acknowledged mineral species, except 
