258 HISTORY OF MINERALOGY. 



might almost imagine," Cuvier says 1 , " that when 

 he had produced his nomenclature of external cha- 

 racters, he was affrighted with his own creation ; 

 and that the reason of his writing so little after 

 this first essay, was to avoid the shackles which he 

 had imposed upon others." His system was, indeed, 

 made known, both in and out of Germany, by his 

 pupils ; but, in consequence of Werner's unwilling- 

 ness to give it on his own authority, it assumed, in 

 its published forms, the appearance of an extorted 

 secret imperfectly told. A Notice of the Mineralo- 

 gical Cabinet of Mine-Director Pabst von Ohain, 

 was, in 1792, published by Karsten and Hoffman, 

 under Werner's direction; and conveyed, by ex- 

 ample, his views of mineralogical arrangement; 

 and 5 in 1816 his Doctrine of Classification was sur- 

 reptitiously copied from his manuscript, and pub- 

 lished in a German Journal, termed The Hesperus. 

 But it was only in 1817, after his death, that there 

 appeared Werners Last Mineral System; edited 

 from his papers by Breithaupt and Kohler : and by 

 this time, as we shall soon see, other systems were 

 coming forwards on the stage. 



A very slight notice of Werner's arrangement 

 will suffice to show that it was, as we have termed 

 it, a mixed system. He makes four great Classes 

 of fossils, Earthy, Saline, Combustible, Metallic; 

 the earthy fossils are in eight Genera Diamond, 

 Zircon, Silica, Alumina, Talc, Lime, Baryta, Hal- 

 4 Ciiv. El ii. 314. 6 Frisch. p. 52. 



