6 INTRODUCTION. . 8. 9. 



. 8. ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 



A farther difference takes place among the or- 

 ganised natural productions, depending upon their 

 mode of generation, subsistence, growth, propaga- 

 tion, and upon the quality and utility of their or- 

 gans. One part of them are termed Animals, the 

 other Plants. 



. 9. MINERALS. 



There is no such difference among the inorganic 

 bodies. The inorganic productions of Nature are 

 altogether comprehended under the name of Mi-, 

 nerals. 



Some naturalists have attempted to introduce a distinc- 

 tion among the inorganic productions of Nature, similar to 

 that mentioned above in respect to the organised bodies ; 

 yet the characters upon which this distinction was founded, 

 do not refer to those bodies themselves, or to their natural- 

 historical properties ; but arise merely from their con- 

 nexion with each other, from local relations, &c. ; and 

 hence the distinction itself is foreign to Natural History. 



Those inorganic productions of Nature which have been 

 separated from the minerals, and provided with a particular 

 name, are the AtmospJicrUia^ or those bodies which constitute 

 the atmosphere, in the same way in which the others form 

 the solid parts of the globe. Agreeably to the preceding 

 considerations, this difference, the only one between the 

 two classes of natural bodies, is quite inadmissible in Natu- 

 ral History ; for Natural History does not consider the na- 

 tural productions in so far as they constitute the solid mass 

 of the globe, or the fluid mass of the atmosphere, but in 

 so far as, taken separately, they possess certain natural-his- 

 torical properties. Hence the atmospherilia cannot be se- 

 parated from the minerals. In a subsequent paragraph it 



