HISTOET OF MINERALOGY. 75 



compiled from various sources, and among others from Pro- 

 fessor Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, to which 

 the student is referred for more extensive details. 



The information possessed by the ancients on the subject 

 of minerals appears to have been most scanty : and the pro- 

 gress made towards a just appreciation of their nature and 

 qualities, in modern times, has been extremely gradual. 



Several of those writers who have been mentioned in 

 our sketch of the history of geology, are alike honourably 

 associated with that of mineralogy. Thus the celebrated 

 Gessner is the first who has written on crystallography. 

 Palissy delivered and published lectures on mineralogy at 

 Paris. The work of Encelius (1557), though mingled 

 with the follies of alchemy as regards the composition of 

 minerals, is quoted with approbation, as presenting judicious 

 views of general classification. Cesalpinus and Schwenkfeld, 

 of Silesia, are eulogised as having published attempts at 

 mineralogical classification, which are regarded as extremely 

 satisfactory for a period when chemistry was so little ad- 

 vanced. Cesius, Greorgius of Stockholm, and Aldrovandus 

 wrote on the arrangement of minerals, dividing them into 

 earths, solidified fluids, stones, and metals. Their ideas, 

 though mingled with the errors of alchemy and the cabala, 

 are often reasonable. 



Stenson, the Dane, is noticed as having been the first to 

 observe the constancy of form in crystals ; since he remarks 

 in the work already mentioned, which was published in 1669, 

 that though the sides of an hexagonal crystal may vary, the 

 angles do not. 



Dominic Grulielmini, in a dissertation on salts, published 

 in 1707, adopts the same views, observing that, " since there 

 is here a principle of crystallisation, the inclination of the 

 planes and angles is always constant;" and Professor Whe- 

 well assures us that he anticipates very nearly the views 

 of later crystallographers, as to the mode in which crystals 

 are formed from elementary molecules. 



These writers were followed by others, who, without 

 achieving any great discoveries themselves, led the way by 

 their labours to the results subsequently obtained by others, 

 and acted as pioneers in the advance which the science 

 was destined to make. Among these are enumerated Cap- 



