54 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [JAN. 25, 
posed that the names of all acknowledged mineral species, except 
those of the elements and a very few more, shall uniformly end in 
ite, and that the termination ine shall as uniformly be used for all 
variety names, and those whose specific character is not fully settled. 
Accordingly, he gives us gypsite, serpentite, wadite, orthoclasite, 
spodumenite, epidotite and many similar changes, while marmolite, 
picrolite, nacrite, and others are made to end in ine, marmoline, 
picroline, nacrine. It is hardly necessary to say that these sugges- 
tions have not been generally or fully accepted. 
With reference to a considerable number of names the full infor- 
mation wanted is not easy to obtain, and in some cases perhaps it 
cannot be found at all. When it is not given in Dana’s Mineralogy 
the student may be sure that he will have to hunt to find it. This 
is particularly true of obsolete names, information about which 
must be sought in the earlier volumes of scientific journals. 
The first publication of Taylor’s name killinite is in 1818, in vol. 
xiii., p. 4, of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, a 
fact not stated in any work on mineralogy, as far as I have 
examined them. There are some names also about which very 
erroneous ideas as to derivation prevail, and which need correction. 
The name chabazite was given in the form chabasie, by Bose 
d’Autic, in 1780, Journal d’Histoire Naturelle, vol. ii., p. 181, and 
is derived from yaSafios, the name given to one of the stones men- 
tioned in the Orphic poem Mepiacéov. The name as we now have it 
in the poem is yoaafids, and the mineral should therefore have been 
called chalazite. Kidd called attention to the blunder in 1809; 
Kidd’s Mineralogy, vol. i., p. 249; but the original name has held 
its place. It is but fair to say that the form yaSdafios was used in 
the current editions of the poem at the time the name was applied. 
The derivation of the word datholite has often been incorrectly 
given. It is really a corruption of the original name datolith, given 
by Esmark in 1806, from daréouacr, to divide, and 260s, alluding to 
the granular structure of one of its varieties. Werner added the h 
for no apparent reason, and the changed form was adopted by most 
authors until Prof. Dana unriddled the matter and gave it its cor- 
rect form again. But wise writers have tried to find another de- 
rivation for it, and one author of note says it is from da60s, which 
he says means turbid, because the mineral is not clear and trans- 
parent. Another wiser one says there is no such Greek word as 
8a90s, Which is true, and that it is from the compound word 8a-@aaaos. 
meaning very turbid, which is no more a proper derivation than the 
other. 
The word feldspar has been changed into felspar for no better 
reason than that the latter form was thought the right one. It was 
used by Wallerius in his Mineralogy of 1747, p. 65, in the Swedish 
form felt-spat, meaning field-spar. It did not originate with him 
probably, but may have been a popular name in his time. Da Costa 
used it in 1757, in the German form feld-spath, and this form was 
current until 1794, when we find, in Kirwan’s Mineralogy, vol. i., 
