LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



since what is said here was so characteristic of the author's 

 attitude of mind to scientific truth in general. 



"-*-. . . To change is always seeming fickleness. 

 But not to change with the advance of science is worse ; 

 it is persistence in error; and, therefore, notwithstanding 

 the former adoption of what has been called the natural- 

 history system, and the pledge to its support given by the 

 author, in supplying it with a Latin nomenclature, the 

 whole system, its classes, orders, genera, and Latin 

 names, has been rejected. . . .' 



" It was in the fourth edition of the Mineralogy, in 

 1854, that the chemical classification, essentially as now 

 understood, took its full place. In this edition, more- 

 over, the other parts of the work were put in new and 

 better form, containing the result of much thought on 

 crystallogeny and homceomorphism. The fifth edition 

 (1868), which includes only the description of species, is 

 a monumental work, the most complete treatise, indeed, 

 that had ever been attempted. In it the classification 

 was still further developed, the nomenclature simplified 

 and systematized, and in connection with the latter sub- 

 ject an exhaustive review of the entire mineralogical 

 literature from the beginning was made in order to un- 

 ravel the vexed questions of the history and priority of 

 mineral names. This last feature of the volume was a 

 labor involving great patience and skill. It was in recog- 

 nition of this work that he received the degree of Doctor 

 of Philosophy from the University of Munich in 1870. 

 In the sixth edition of the System (1892), by his son, he 

 took a lively interest, but was unable to co-operate in 

 the labor actively in consequence of the condition of his 

 health ; even the reading of the final proofs, though at- 

 tempted, had to be soon given up. 



" Besides the System, he also issued a small work, called 

 the Manual of Mineralogy, which has passed through four 

 editions (1848, 1857, l8 7?> 1887). The pages of this 

 Journal also contain, particularly down to 1868, many 

 papers on mineralogical topics; his last paper in this field 

 was published in 1874. The subjects that interested him 

 were, for the most part, those of a general and philosophi- 

 cal nature, such as questions of classification, theories of 

 crystallogeny, and the morphological relations of species. 

 In the points connected with the descriptions of individual 



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