PREFACE. 



THE leading features of the present treatise are due 

 to the circumstances under which the author studied Min- 

 eralogy. Situated out of the reach of personal instruction, 

 or the facilities which a well arranged collection affords, he 

 was compelled to acquire his knowledge of Terminology 

 from the descriptions of species contained in various works 

 upon the science, with the aid of such a collection of min- 

 erals as the vicinity in which he lived principally afforded. 

 The problem of determining from books the names of his 

 minerals was frequently to be solved ; and he soon discov- 

 ered how little benefit he could enjoy in the task, from the 

 scientific process by which the Botanist and Zoologist are 

 guided to the names of objects in their respective depart- 

 ments. A complete treatise was often to be perused spe- 

 cies after species in succession^ from beginning to end in 

 order to arrive at the name of a particular mineral. A 

 method of proceeding like this, however annoying it might 

 occasionally prove to the student accustomed to the simple 

 and precise systems of Natural History, could nevertheless, 

 from the limited number of species in Mineralogy, have 

 been tolerated, but for the painful uncertainty in which it 

 often left the mind when every species had been examined, 

 and some one fixed upon perhaps, as that to which the in- 

 dividual under examination might belong. This want of 

 confidence, however, which he was continually prevented 

 from placing in the accuracy of his results, made all his 

 early studies of a nature most discouraging. Nor was it 



