M I N 



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M I 



1 '23. It burns with a bright flame, 

 emitting, during its combustion, a 

 bituminous odour. It occurs near 

 Castleton, in Derbyshire. 



MI'NERAL CHA'RCOAL. A fibrous vari- 

 ety of non-bituminous mineral coal. 



MiirEBALiZA'Tioff. The process of 

 converting into a mineral some 

 body not previously such. 



MI'NEBALIZEB. That which converts 

 a substance into a mineral. Metals 

 are combined with oxygen, sulphur, 

 &c., by which their peculiar metal- 

 lic properties are more or less dis- 

 guised; in this case, the metal is 

 said to be mineralized, and the 

 oxygen or sulphur is termed the 

 mineralizer. 



MI'NERALS. (minera, Lat. mineral, 

 Fr. minerdle, It.) Those bodies 

 which are destitute of organization, 

 and which naturally exist within 

 the earth or at its surface. The 

 term fossil is usually appropriated 

 to those organic substances which 

 have become penetrated by earthy 

 or metallic particles. 



Minerals have been divided into 

 two kinds; simple, or homogeneous, 

 and compound, or heterogeneous. 

 Simple minerals appear uniform 

 and homogeneous in all their parts. 

 They do, in fact, usually contain 

 several different elementary sys- 

 tems; but these are so intimately 

 combined, and similarly blended, 

 in every part, as to exhibit a 

 uniformity of appearance. 



Compound minerals more or less 

 evidently discover to the eye, that 

 they are composed of two or more 

 simple minerals, which either merely 

 adhere to each other, or, as is some- 

 times the case, appear imbedded 

 one in the other. Compound mi- 

 nerals are frequently aggregates or 

 rocks. 



The description of minerals, and 

 their arrangement in systematic 

 order, must result from an investi- 

 gation of their properties. These 

 properties consist in certain rela- 



tions which minerals bear to our 

 senses, or to other objects. Some 

 of them are discoverable by mere 

 inspection, or, at most, require 

 some simple experiment to be made 

 upon the mineral to ascertain its 

 hardness, structure, gravity, &c., 

 while others cannot be observed 

 without a decomposition of the 

 mineral. All these properties are 

 usually called characters. We 

 hence have a twofold division of 

 the properties or characters of mi- 

 nerals into chemical and physical. 

 Cleaveland. 



MI'NERALOGY. That science, says 

 Cleaveland, which has for its object 

 a knowledge of the properties and 

 relations of minerals, and enables 

 us to distinguish, arrange, and 

 describe them. 



Jameson defines mineralogy to 

 be that part of natural history 

 which makes us acquainted with 

 the properties and relations of mi- 

 nerals. It is divided, according 

 to that professor, into two grand 

 branches, namely, mineralogy, pro- 

 perly so called, and geology. Mi- 

 neralogy treats of the properties 

 and relations of simple minerals; 

 while geology considers the various 

 properties and relations of the at- 

 mosphere, the waters of the globe, 

 the mountain rocks, or those mi- 

 neral masses of which the earth is 

 principally composed, and the form, 

 density, heat, electricity, and mag- 

 netism of the earth. 



The history of the materials of 

 the crust of the globe, their pro- 

 perties as objects of philosophical 

 enquiry, and their application 'to 

 the useful arts and the embellish- 

 ments of life, with the characters 

 by which they can be certainly 

 distinguished one from another, 

 form the object of mineralogy, 

 taken in its most extended sense. 



Mineralogy is a science of such 

 interest, that it would be much to 

 be regretted if its real objects and 



