no The Founders of Geology LECT. 



minerals, but with one remarkable exception, to which I 

 shall afterwards allude ; and he would deliberate over the 

 arrangement of a dinner with as much gravity as over 

 that of his library or his cabinet. 



"We cannot take up any of Werner's writings without 

 at once noting this prominent peculiarity of his mind. 

 Every fact, every proposition is definitely classified and 

 ticketed, and even if he has little or nothing to say under 

 any particular subdivision, the subdivision is nevertheless 

 placed in its due niche all the same. 



This methodical habit proved of the greatest service to 

 the cause of mineralogy. When Werner entered upon 

 his mineralogical studies, the science of minerals was an 

 extraordinary chaos of detached observations and uncon- 

 nected pieces of knowledge. But his very first essay 

 began to put it into order, and by degrees he introduced 

 into it a definite methodical treatment, doing for it very 

 much what Linnaeus had done some years before for 

 botany. Like that great naturalist, he had to invent a 

 language to express with precision the characters which 

 he wished to denote, so that mineralogists everywhere 

 could recognize them. For this purpose he employed his 

 mother tongue, and devised a terminology which, though 

 artificial and cumbrous, was undoubtedly of great service 

 for a time. Uncouth in German, it became almost bar- 

 barous when translated into other languages. What would 

 the modern English-speaking student think of a teacher 

 who taught him, as definite characters, that a mineral could 

 be distinguished as "hard, or semi-hard," "soft or very soft," 

 as " very cold, cold, pretty cold, or rather cold," as " forti- 

 fication-wise bent," as " indeterminate curved lamellar," as 



