

INTRODUCTION. XIX 



2. Order of the distinctive Characters. 



The present work may be said to have passed through 

 several editions, before its public appearance ; and the por- 

 tions newly modified, or finally rejected, with the detached 

 discussions, composed in order to consolidate the progress 

 and universal consistency of the plan, would form a moderate 

 volume. These precautions became necessary, as upon an 

 unknown coast the discoverer employs boats to sound the 

 bottom, before the ship can advance with safety. Among 

 numerous difficulties, which will be perceived in proportion 

 to the learning of the reader, the arrangement of the cha- 

 racters, and the choice of one or two of the new terms, were 

 not the least. They now stand as follow: Texture, Hard- Order 

 ness, Fracture, Fragments, Weight, Lustre, Transparency 5 proposed, 

 to which the colour is sometimes added, though the most 

 vague and insignificant of all the characteristics. 



Murray, in his excellent System of Chemistry, has justly Objections to 

 observed that it is difficult to attach precise ideas to arbitrary ciphers, 

 numbers. Every reader must have observed, that he passes 

 without reflection the ciphers 1, 2, 3, &c. when applied to 

 Hardness, Specific Gravity, Lustre, or Transparency. It 

 therefore seemed more advantageous to employ terms derived 

 from the substances themselves, which, though only relative 

 and recollective, yet convey ideas more clear, and, so to 

 speak, more tangible than barren ciphers. In this, and other 

 instances, the reader not conversant with modern mineralogy 

 may perhaps be surprised at the neology : but he must be . Neology 

 informed that the science itself is entirely new; and that mdl5 P eilsal > le 

 there is no recent mineralogical work which does not abound 

 with new terms, not to be found in any dictionary, but which 

 are indispensably necessary, in order to delineate substances 

 and qualities which did not before fall within the range of 

 human intellect or language. The names which have been 

 added to botany and zoology, within half a century, might be 



