19 



have told the story as lie did, for his intellectual equipment 

 consisted not only of profound and curious chemical knowl- 

 e, won as much from laboratory work as from books, but of 

 more than an amateur's acquaintance with the laws of physics. 

 His study of geology, both stratigraphieal and chemical, was 

 , al with his employment as a youth by the Canadian 

 Geological Society. He was, moreover, a good mathema- 

 tician, and what is an equally important qualification in a 

 student of the chemistry of the universe, and of the develop- 

 ment of the globe, a_poet. But death, kept at bay for several 

 years by his determination to live and complete his miner- 

 v, at length conquered, and his vision of the earth's birth 

 and grow.th remained written only in fragments. It is impos- 

 sible to assign to every thinker his due share of the world's 

 intellectual progress. Few claim, and to still fewer is assigned 

 by universal consent, the discoveries of any of nature's great 

 ts, or the formulation of one of nature's universal laws. 

 Whether Hunt's law, that the volume of all species, whether 

 liquid, gaseous or solid, is constant, and that "the integral 

 iit varies diivetly as the density," is really one of nature's 

 laws, posterity will determine. But one of the greatest living 

 mineralogists, speaking "1 Hunt's system, expressed to me 

 the linn conviction that it would receive wider and heartier 

 jiiition in the future than had been accorded to it in the 



intrinsic rather than super- 



,. differences, it commends itself slowly to the work in- 



student. Moreover, ttne trom Hunt's hands it was 



by a somewhat clumsy and repellant nomencla- 



. But while there maybe errors in 1'act and statement 



Mali.- mineral"- v will rank hi-h 

 >oks of 



II mil's lite 1 iueiions 



with eh and mineralogy, or with geology from a 



.t\ iii-j the Canadian . 



al Sur. came to doubt the eonve- 



- assigned to certain gm- 



Sir \V. LOIMII. and : iied hi.- 



