38 Review of Cleaveland’s Mineralogy. 
with its sister science, Geology, is fast arresting the public at- 
tention. In such astate of things, books relating to mineralo- 
gy would of course be eagerly sought for. 
No work, anterior to Kirwan, could be consulted by the stu- 
dent with much advantage, on account of the wonderful progress, — 
which, within forty or fifty years, has been made in mineralogy. 
Even the treatise of Mr. Kirwan, who performed a most impor- 
_ tant service to the science, was become, in some considerable de- 
gree, imperfect and obsolete ; the German treatises, the fruit- 
ful fountains from which the science had flowed over Europe, 
were not translated ; neither were those of the French; and 
this was the more to be regretted, because they had mellowed 
down the harshness and enriched the sterility of the German 
method of description, besides adding many interesting disco- 
veries of their own. It is true we possessed the truly valua- 
ble, treatise of Professor Jameson, the most complete in our 
language. But the expense of the work made it unattainable 
by most of our students, and the undeviating strictness with 
which the highly respectable author has adhered *to the Ger- 
man mode of description, gave it an aspect somewhat repul- 
sive to the minds of novices, who consulted no other book. 
We are, however, well aware of the value of this work, espe- 
cially in the improved edition. It must, without doubt, be in 
the hands of every one who would be master of the science ; 
but it is much better adapted to the purposes of proficients 
than of beginners. 
The aitiiealesical articles dispersed through Aikin’s Dic- 
tionary are exceedingly valuable ; but, from the high price of 
the work, they are inaccessible to most persons. 
The most recent of the French systems, that by Brongniart, 
seemed to combine nearly all the requisites that could be de- 
sired in an elementary treatise ; and a translation of it would 
probably, ere this, have been given to the American public, 
had we not been led to expect the work of Professor Cleave- 
land, which, it was anticipated, would at least possess one 
important advantage over the work of Brongniart, and every 
other ; it would exhibit, more or less extensively, American — 
