INTRODUCTION. XXI 



knowledge of their texture, and be of particular use in 

 many of his geological speculations on their formations."* 



This skilful author has arranged his characters in the fol- 

 lowing order: Texture, Fracture, Lustre, Hardness, Fra- 

 gility, Transparency, Fragments, Colour. It is hoped the 

 present arrangement will be found more justly progressive 



and connected. But after having advanced several coerent Townson's 

 . , . , . , . J difficulties, 



arguments against Werner s arrangement, in his tenth chap- 

 ter, which treats of Classification, Description, and Investi- 

 gation, he strangely introduces the following remark in his 

 ninth chapter, on the Exterior Characters of Minerals, which 

 hence appears to have been written after the tenth. " Though 

 I have made some objections, in my tenth chapter, to the 

 order of the characters in the descriptions, disapproving of 

 their beginning by their least characteristic qualities, as co- 

 lour and accidental shapes ; yet I perceive, were I to throw 

 these further backward, other inconveniences would be the 

 consequence. The characters belonging to each of the three 

 different states of cohesion, as solid, friable, and fluid, are 

 placed under their respective heads ; but the colours, being 

 common to all the three, are placed first." This is certainly 

 a specimen of careless composition. The supposed inconve- 

 niences ought to have been indicated, if they did not consist 

 in the labour, certainly not small, of altering or rewriting 

 a system already composed, in order to render it coherent and 

 uniform. But the forcible arguments, in his tenth chapter, 

 remain unconfutedj and the arrangement of Werner's cha- 

 racters has met with other able opponents. His extreme Werner's 

 attachment to the distinction of colours, from which he has incon S ruitie ' 

 even deduced many improper, not to say absurd, appellations 

 of mineral substances, has led him to place this vague cha- 

 racteristic in the first rank. The incongruity of the concate- 

 nation has been justly ridiculed in other respects. From the 

 Lustre he passes to the Fracture, and from the Fracture to 

 the Transparency 5 from the Coldness to the Weight, and 



* Philosophy of Mineralogy, London, 1798, 8vo. p, 187. 



