REFORM OF MINERALOGICAL SYSTEMS. 263 



precisely, the proportion of pure metal which it 

 contained. And in the last year of his life*, he had 

 marked out, as the employment of the ensuing wjja- 

 ter, the study of the system of Berzelius, with a 

 view to find out the laws of combination as dis- 

 closed by external characters. In the same spirit, 

 his pupil Breithaupt 4 attempted to discover the 

 ingredients of minerals by their peculiarities of 

 crystallization. The persuasion that there must be 

 some connexion between composition and proper- 

 ties, transformed itself, in their minds, into a belief 

 that they could seize the nature of the connexion 

 by a sort of instinct. 



This opinion of the independency of the science 

 of external characters, and of its sufficiency for its 

 own object, at last assumed its complete form in 

 the bold attempt to construct a system which should 

 borrow nothing from chemistry. This attempt was 

 made by Frederick Mohs, who had been the pupil 

 of Werner, and was afterwards his successor in the 

 school of Freiberg; and who, by the acute and 

 methodical character of his intellect, and by his 

 intimate knowledge of minerals, was worthy of his 

 predecessor. Rejecting altogether all divisions of 

 which the import was chemical, Mohs turned for 

 guidance, or at least for the light of analogy, to 

 botany. His object was to construct a Natural 

 System of mineralogy. What the conditions and 

 advantages of a natural system of any province of 



3 Frisch. 3. 4 Dresdn. Auswahl, vol. ii. p. 97. 



