664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mists, those wizards who vainly searched for the lucky stone 

 which would transform all into gold. From the ashes of their 

 fires comes as a heritage the application of heat and fusion to aid 

 in investigation, but even the value of these was not clearly seen 

 for several centuries thereafter. 



Behind the clouds there was a light, and the time at last came 

 for it to melt these away, revealing a vast new field for thought 

 and study in the inorganic world. Men began to look more care- 

 fully at the objects near them, to observe the ways of Nature, and 

 to attempt the solution of some of her mysteries ; then it was seen 

 that even in the inert stone there was a story to be read an ever- 

 changing story full of historical interest, if only one could read it. 



It is interesting to note through these centuries the struggles 

 for existence and advancement which finally brought forth, at the 

 beginning of our era, mineralogy as a science. In the sixteenth 

 century the work of Agricola laid the foundation for physical 

 mineralogy. In the eighteenth century Cronstedt pointed out 

 the distinction, so long unknown, between rocks and minerals, 

 based on chemical properties. At the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century came the work of Werner and Hauye. These men per- 

 fected the methods and made more accurate descriptions of min- 

 erals, thus becoming the founders of modern mineralogy, and 

 making their respective countries, Germany and France, the 

 centers for this study. During the present century the growth 

 has been as rapid as it was slow during all the preceding centu- 

 ries, so that at the present time its students nearly outnumber the 

 species. 



The study of the properties of minerals physical, chemical, 

 and optical was carefully made and verified over and over again, 

 but the question of origin was unsettled ; in many cases it was 

 even impossible to conjecture. So its devotees sought a means of 

 revealing and proving this problem of origin, and then arose what 

 we may term the new mineralogy. Germany and France have 

 equal share in the honor of founding the science of mineralogy, 

 but to France belongs the credit of original active investigation 

 into the origin of minerals. This feature of new sciences is be- 

 coming quite prominent, and one would infer that there was a 

 very great awakening in the scientific world, for we hear of the 

 new astronomy, the new chemistry, and the new geology ; but it 

 is not so much new science, as old science studied by new methods 

 brought about by the great underlying law of the universe, pro- 

 gression, which causes the new of to-day to become the old of 

 to-morrow. The new mineralogy endeavors to solve the problem 

 of origin by the reproduction, artificially, of the mineral using 

 similar agents and like conditions, as in Nature. While attempts 

 were made to reproduce minerals early in the century and even 



