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On Mineralo(fical Classification. By Professor Carl Friedrich 

 Naumann. 



All mineralogists are probably agreed, that mineralogical 

 species are to be regarded as the pi'oper object of every classi- 

 fication. They represent the units which are to be grouped 

 in some way or other, in order that a well arranged general 

 view of the mineral kingdom may be obtained ; they furnish 

 the individual building stones, by whose union is to be erected 

 the edifice which is to receive the name of a mineralogical 

 system, without, however, a building plan having hitherto 

 been proposed which satisfies all demands. This has proba- 

 bly arisen, on the one hand, from the difficulty of arranging 

 the amorphous mineral species among the crystalline species, 

 and on the other, from the one-sidedness which has caused 

 mineralogists, as well as chemists, to err in their attempts at 

 classification. 



Few mineralogists doubt that amorphous possess just a.s 

 good a right as crystalline substances to be arranged in classi- 

 fications of the mineral kingdom. The views of mineralo- 

 gists diff'ei", however, as to whether amorphous substances 

 are to be arranged along with crystalline species, as they are 

 in Mobs' system, or, as Fuchs proposes, they should only be 

 appended as pseudo-species, or, as has partly taken place in 

 Breithaupt's arrangement, they should be grouped together 

 in a separate order. 



Some mineralogists, biassed by the old oryctognostical 

 prejudice, that the so-called external characters are alone of 

 value in the characteristic and classification of minerals, have, 

 owing to their not sufficiently appreciating the invaluable 

 results of chemical investigation, endeavoured to establish 

 mineralogical systems, which must necessarily be rejected 

 by chemists, because they collect together in the same order, 

 nay, even in the same genus, minerals of the most hetero- 

 geneous constitution, merely from their agreeing in this or 

 that morphological or physical character. On the other 

 hand, chemists have also attempted to form mineralogical 

 systems, which have never received the approbation of mi- 



