Sect. III.] Mineralogy. I95 



deserves to be ranked among the greatest of its 

 benefactors now living*. 



Beside the systematic writers just mentioned, 

 several naturalists of great eminence have founded 

 mineralogical distinctions on characters peculiar to 

 themselves, and have pursued their inquiries, 

 founded on these characters, to a very curious and 

 instructive length. Rome de Lisle of France, in 

 his Cry st alio graphic, published a few years since, 

 made a very ingenious application of geometry to 

 the phenomena of minerals, and exhihited a work 

 in which they were subjected to all the precise 

 principles of mathematical calculation. M. Bris- 

 son, another distinguished mineralogist of the same 

 country, proposed to found the leading character 

 of mineral bodies on the static principle, or their 

 relative specific gravities ; and in the exhibition of 

 his plan displayed much ingenuity and learning. 

 Scarcely inferior to any that have been mentioned 

 is the venerable M. Sage, also of France, who, in 

 the art of assaying, in tracing the connexion be- 

 tween the mineral and the other kingdoms of na- 

 ture, and by his experiments in chemical analysis, 

 has contributed much to improve this department 

 of natural history. 



The subject of Crystallisation engaged much of 

 the attention of chemists and mineralogists during 

 the eighteenth century. The first attempt to ac- 

 count for this phenomenon, in any manner that 

 deserves the name of philosophical, was by sir Isaac 

 Newton. He supposed the aggregation which 



* See Elements of Mineralogy, by Richard Kln^'aa, F. R. S. 



&c. 2 vols, 8vo, 1794. 



02 



