250 



CHAPTER VII. 



ATTEMPTS TO ESTABLISH THE FIXITY OF OTHER 

 PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. WERNER. 



THE reflections from which it appeared, (p. 203 

 of this volume,) that in order to obtain general 

 knowledge respecting bodies, we must give scientific 

 fixity to our appreciation of their properties, applies 

 to their other properties as well as to their crystal- 

 line form. And though none of the other properties 

 have yet been referred to standards so definite as 

 that which geometry supplies for crystals, a system 

 has been introduced which makes their measures 

 far more constant and precise than they are to a 

 common undisciplined sense. 



The author of this system was Abraham Gottlob 

 Werner, who had been educated in the institutions 

 which the elector of Saxony had established at the 

 mines of Freiberg. Of an exact and methodical 

 intellect, and of great acuteness of the senses, Wer- 

 ner was well fitted for the task of giving fixity to 

 the appreciation of outward impressions; and this 

 he attempted in his Dissertation on the External 

 Characters of Fossils, which was published at Leip- 

 zig in 1774. Of the precision of his estimation of 

 such characters, we may judge from the following- 

 story, told by his biographer Frisch 1 . One of his 

 1 Werner's Leben, p. 26. 



