392 Analysis of Scientific Books. 
and forests echoed with yells and howlings, her mild persuasive 
voice is now listened to with delight in populous and wealthy 
cities. The volumes before us confirm this truth; and it is 
alike honourable to the author, and his fellow-citizens, that a 
second edition of this valuable work has been so soon called 
for, Mineralogy isa study which should, and does, excite an 
intense and increasing interest amongst the inhabitants of the 
United States, whose almost boundless territory, eminently 
fertile, as the pages of this work evince, in the objects of mi- 
neralogical science, will amply repay them for their labour in 
exploring it. 
The first 97 pages of the treatise contain an introduction to 
the study of mineralogy, divided into four chapters. The first 
consists of definitions, and preliminary observations. Although 
there be nothing new in this chapter, it opens the subject neatly, 
and contains some judicious remarks. Wernerians divide 
mineralogy into oryctognosy, chemical mineralogy, geognosy, 
geographical mineralogy, and economical mineralogy. Our 
author discards the first and third terms, which he very pro- 
perly observes “ have been unnecessarily introduced into the 
English language from German writers,” and uses the older 
and better words, mineralogy and geology; defining the business 
of the former to be the study of simple minerals, or such as 
have their elementary principles so blended that they appear 
uniform and homogeneous to the eye, whilst compound minerals, 
as rocks, belong to the latter. We exposed the absurdity of the 
term oryctognosy in our last number, and we are happy to find 
our opinion in unison with that of so respectable a writer as Mr. 
Cleaveland. The passion for besetting the approaches of sci- 
ence with a vile chevaux de frise of hard names cannot be too 
often, or too earnestly, reprobated ; and closely allied to this 
pedantry are the mineralogical and chemical symbols lately 
introduced by Berzelius. An admirable comment, not merely 
on the inutility, but the absolute mischief of the latter, may be 
found in the Annals of Philosophy. (Volume iv., new series, 
p- 409). In a former number the editor has given the first 
part of Berzelius’s memoir on the sulphurets, and intended 
to have furnished an abstract of the remaining portion in the 
present; but having concluded that part which relates to the 
alcaline sulphurets, he refers his reader for the remainder 
to the original paper in the Annales de Chimie, adding, “ This 
paper is replete with the symbols peculiar to Berzelius, and they 
are so generally unaccompanied by any explanation, that it is 
extremely difficult to reduce them to an intelligible form ; for 
example, in about twenty lines there occur eight symbols of the 
following kind, As S* + 6 Ag S?.” Here the English reader 
actually loses much valuable matter, in consequence of its being 
involved in these abominable symbols. 
