454 OBJECTS AND METHOD OF MINERALOGY. [XIX. 



sion, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism belong to the do- 

 main of physics ; while chemistry treats of their relations to 

 each other, and of their transformations under the influences 

 of heat, light, and electricity. Chemistry is thus to mineralogy 

 what "biology is to organography ; and the abstract sciences, 

 physics and chemistry, must precede, and form the basis of the 

 concrete science, mineralogy. Many species are chiefly distin- 

 guished by their chemical activities, and hence chemical char- 

 acters must be greatly depended upon in mineralogical classifi- 

 cation. 



Chemical change implies disorganization, and all so-called 

 chemical species are inorganic, that is to say, unorganized, and 

 hence really belong to the mineral kingdom. In this extended 

 sense, mineralogy takes in not only the few metals, oxides, sul- 

 phides, silicates, and other salts which are found in nature, but 

 also all those which are the products of the chemist's skill. It 

 embraces not only the few native resins and hydrocarbons, but 

 all the bodies of the carbon series made known by the re- 

 searches of modern chemistry. 



The primary object of a natural classification, it must be re- 

 membered, is not, like that of an artificial system, to serve the 

 purpose of determining species, or the convenience of the stu- 

 dent, but so to arrange bodies in genera, orders, and species as to 

 satisfy most thoroughly natural affinities. Such a classification 

 in mineralogy will be based upon a consideration of all the 

 physical and chemical relations of bodies, and will enable us to 

 see that the various properties of a species are not so many 

 arbitrary signs, but the necessary results of its constitution. It 

 will give for the mineral kingdom what the labors of great 

 naturalists have already nearly attained for the vegetable and 

 animal kingdoms. 



Oken saw the necessity of thus enlarging the bounds of min- 

 eralogy, and in his Physiophilosophy attempted a mineralogical 

 classification ; but it is based on fanciful and false analogies, 

 with but little reference either to physical or chemical charac- 

 ters, and in the present state of our knowledge is valueless, 

 except as an effort in the right direction, and an attempt to 



