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 generaand 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 Phlogonie, and under this 
we have as the Ist, Genus, Pyricubia, and under this two spe- 
cies— 
Ist. Pyricubium maximum foliaceum, and 
2d. Pyricubium solidum minus. 
The first of these species is simply cubical crystal of iron pyrites, 
striated by oscillation toward» a hemi-tetrahexahedron, and the 
second is the unstriated crystals 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 bis 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 Haidinger 
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 ; Dodecahe- 
dral 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 imitators. 
Prof. C. W. 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 w ay 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 Nomen- 
clature,” in which he presents a complete arrangement according 
to the Natural History method, and gives some very good reasons 
for its adoption. This svstem is carried out in full in the first edi- 
tion, 1837, of his great work on Mineralogy. He uses in general 
two names for each mineral, as Andalusius prismaticus for andalu- 
site, but he gives the common name first in all cases. In his second 
