XXXV 1 



INTRODUCTION. 



salts, whence a more noble progeny -, but many of the latter 

 are derived from Iron, a Proteus who changes according to 



Influence of the disposition of each wife."* He thus insinuates his opi- 

 iron. m - on O f the wide influence of iron, a metal which belongs to 

 all ages and formations $ and whose power is prodigious and 

 perpetual, even in animal and vegetable life. Bergman has 

 indeed asserted a similar wide diffusion of gold, which has 

 escaped the more recent and precise tests of chemistry, and 

 is now rather regarded as imaginary j while the most nume- 

 rous and exact experiments more and more evince the uni- 

 versality of iron, which drops even from the atmosphere as 

 the chief ingredient of what are called meteoric stones, and 

 supplies volcanoes from the lowest abysses of the earth. Iron, 

 the grandest of the metals, is not only the most widely dif- 

 fused, but the most useful to mankind in all the stages of 

 society, and without it civilisation would be unknown ; as it 

 . furnishes the spade and the plough to the agricultor, tools to 

 the artisan, the compass to the mariner, armour and weapons 

 to the hero, and ink to the eternal theme of the author. 

 But waving these considerations, Linneus has thus sufficiently 

 expressed his opinion of its influence in the constitution of 

 rocks and stones. 



Cronstedt. Cronstedt, who may be called the grandfather of modern 

 mineralogy, as Bergman is the father, had long ago a faint 

 discovery of this truth 3 for among his nine earths, several 

 of which have since been discarded, he reckons Garnet Earth, 

 which, as that substance is strongly impregnated with iron, 



Bergman, can only be the aiderous earth here mentioned. Bergman 

 also, in his Sciagraphia, which laid the foundations of modern 

 mineralogy, especially reckons the ferruginous among the six 

 principal earths, as he includes the barytic. In his account 

 of carbonate of lime, he mentions that it is seldom free from 



* Lithogenesiam studiose in itineribus quoesivi, dedicique earn absolvi Prse- 

 cipitatione et Crystallisatione ; atque Terras prosterni, sed Quartzum, Spatuni, 

 Micamque, exsurgere. Terras femineas dein impregnari a Salibus masculis, 

 indeque prognasci Nobiliores ; horum vero plurimos a Marte, Proteo magis 

 TOUtabili, pro indole cujuscunque conjugis. Linn, a Grnelin, p. 4, 



