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Shepard's Treatise on Mineralogy. 1G9 



properties, (physiography;) — it being understood throughout, 

 that the natural properties, viz. those neither manifesting any 

 change in themselves, or leading to any in the substances which 

 possess them during their examination, are the sole objects of 

 attention. In this manner are obtained three independent sci- 

 ences; viz. zoology, botany, and mineralogy, differing from each 

 other in the natural objects to which they relate, while each by 

 itself, proceeding from a comparison of natural historical proper- 

 ties, gives rise to a collection of homogeneous information, and on 

 this account strictly conforms to the logical idea of a science. 



It is plain that mineralogy thus developed has all that is ne- 

 cessary to make it a science, inasmuch as it is wholly distinct 

 from other sciences, and possesses the requisite singleness of aim 

 and means, in respect to minerals, — its sole province being to illus- 

 trate their natural properties, and thereupon to name, classify, dis- 

 tinguish and describe the species. 



If mineralogy as I have defined it may be a science by itself, 

 I see not why in the study of minerals, it may not be equally 

 useful as are the correlative branches of zoology and botany in 

 the study of animals and plants. The objection that " there is 

 a wide and irreconcilable distinction between the results of vital 

 force in the production of organized forms and those of molecu- 

 lar attraction which govern the characters of crystallized mine- 

 rals," lies only as it seems to me against the possibility of mine- 

 rals being treated natural-historically, but does not show, in the 

 event of its being practicable thus to consider them, that the ad- 

 vantages supposed, would not result to the investigation of mine- 

 rals. But that this difference of dynamics operates unfavorably 

 to the natural history treatment of mineralogy I deny; and claim 

 on the contrary, that the variety and constancy exhibited in the 

 properties of minerals in consequence of the very absence of life, 

 render those properties peculiarly available for the purposes in 

 question. 



If you should still object that my method injuriously restricts 

 the science, and prefer the ancient definition which allows to 

 mineralogy every sort of information which relates to minerals, I 

 have only to say, that when you have applied the same definition 

 to zoology and botany, you have extinguished nearly the entire 

 circle of the modern physical sciences, and reduced all our know- 

 ledge of external things into three vast assemblages, which from 



Vol. xl vni, No. 1.— Oct.-Dec. 1844. 22 



