Reflections on some Mineralogical Systems. 117 
which has favoured its separation, and that its molecules 
have been able to condense and form a closer texture than 
‘that of wood, and assume along with the appearance a 
specific gravity greater than that of stone. 
{f we consider the nature of the salts which the bezoar 
has left by incineration, we may conjecture that the shrubs, 
which were the food of the animal in which it was formed, 
grew in soils where the base is soda, such as we know to 
exist throughout all Persia. 
_XXIT. Reflections on some Mineralogical Systems. By 
R. Cuenevix, Esq. F.R.S. and M.R.I.A., Sc. Trans- 
lated entire from the French, with Notes h, y the Trans- 
lator. bs 
[Concluded from p. 51.] 
. PRACTICAL USE OF THE WERNERIAN METHOD. 
: the system and method of external characters had been en- 
titled The Miner’s Guide or Manual, we should have required 
from the author only that kind of knowledge which the miner 
might possess or employ. But how has it been imagined 
possible to qualify these principles with the name of science, 
when the auxiliary intelligence of all the collateral sciences 
has been excluded? In the estimation of specific gravity, in 
which there are as many degrees as bodies in nature, as we 
have seen, M. Werner admits of only five general divisions, 
and takes no notice of the details which constitute indivi- 
duality. Tp the measure of angles, where nature has pre- 
sented so many degrees and combinations drawn from the 
vast treasure of infinity, Werner despises the instrument 
which could give us new eyes to estimate them, or supposes 
its application too difficult for his science. Tus, we are 
taught what the mathematics have never suspected, that a 
right angle may be that which is greater than 90° in the 
ancient division of the circle ; ; and two characters which he 
himself, and others still more than he, have justly consi- 
dered as extremely important, are not only reduced to be 
of no greater value than unctuosity, coldness, &c.; but in 
studying them, we study errors; we learn to falsify the 
sciences, whose beauty and accuracy will never be equalled 
by details capable of filling a whole atic on the empirical 
eharacters of minerals, 
In all that the celebrated author of the system of external 
eharacters has done, it seems as if he had bad no other ob- 
H13 ject 
