ISS Natural I J is tort/, [Chap. UI. 



in suj-jcrb maj^nificence and accuracy^ >vithout an 

 equal on earth*. 



SECTION IlL 



IVIINERALOGY. 



This department of natural history has also, 

 ^s ithin the period under review, passed through va 

 rious revolutions, and received numerous improve- 

 ments equallv fundamental and important. From 

 the time of Aristotle, the first distinguished mine- 

 ralogist, to that of Becher, a learned German, little 

 had been done in this science, except bringing 

 together, and gradually increasing, a wilderness of 

 facts, without system or order. Becher, toward 

 the latter end of the seventeenth century, turning 

 his attention with zeal toward this subject, be- 

 came the father of regular mineralogy. After him. 

 a number of adventurers in this field of inquiry ap- 

 peared, but they did little more than make large 

 collections of mineral substances, and class them 

 according to the old rules. Among the principal 

 of tliese were Hierne, a Swede, who gave an ample 

 and very valuable account of the fossils of his own 

 country; Woodward f and Charleton, English na- 

 turalists, who made curious collections and enu- 



* This is tho opinion of Dr. Darwin, whose taste or informa- 

 tion on this subject will not be questioned. — Pht/tohu^ia. 



f Woodward instituted a professorship of mineralogy about the 

 year 1/20, in the university of Cambridge, to which he left his 



culkction -of minerals lis a lejiiH-y^ " , 



