CLASSIFICATION OF MINERALS, 259 



lites. It is clear that these genera are in the main 

 chemical, for chemistry alone can definitely distin- 

 guish the earths which characterize them. Yet the 

 Wernerian arrangement supposed the distinctions to 

 be practically made by reference to those external 

 characters which the teacher himself could employ 

 with such surpassing skill. And though it cannot 

 be doubted, that the chemical views which prevailed 

 around him had a latent influence on his classifica- 

 tions in some cases, he resolutely refused to bend 

 his system to the authority of chemistry. Thus 6 , 

 when he was blamed for having, in opposition to 

 the chemists, placed diamond among the earthy fos- 

 sils, he persisted in declaring that, minerallogically 

 considered, it was a stone, and could not be treated 

 as anything else. 



This was an indication of that tendency, which, 

 under his successor, led to a complete separation of 

 the two grounds of classification. But before we 

 proceed to this, we must notice what was doing at 

 this period in other parts of Europe. 



Hauys System. Though Werner, on his own 

 principles, ought to have been the first person to 

 see. the immense value of the most marked of 

 external characters, crystalline form, he did not, in 

 fact, attach much importance to it. Perhaps he 

 was in some measure fascinated by a fondness for 

 those characters which he had himself systematized, 

 and the study of which did not direct him to look 

 6 Frisch. p. 62. 



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