REFORM OF MINERALOGLCAL SYSTEMS 269 



But Berzelius did not so easily resign his pro- 

 ject. With the most unhesitating confession of his 

 first failure, but with undaunted courage, he again 

 girded himself to the task of rebuilding his edifice. 

 Defeated at the electro-positive position, he now 

 resolved to make a stand at the electro-negative 

 element. In 1824, he published in the Transac- 

 tions of the Swedish Academy, a Memoir On the 

 Alterations in the Chemical Mineral System, which 

 necessarily follow from the property exhibited by 

 Isomorphous Bodies, of replacing each other in 

 given proportions. The alteration was, in fact, an 

 inversion of the system, with an attempt still to 

 preserve the electro-chemical principle of arrange- 

 ment. Thus, instead of arranging metallic minerals 

 according to the metal, under iron, copper, &c., all 

 the sulphurets were classed together, all the oxides 

 together, all the sulphates together, and so in other 

 respects. That such an order was a great improve- 

 ment upon the preceding one, cannot be doubted ; 

 but we shall see, I think, that as a strict scientific 

 system it was not successful. The discovery of 

 isomorphism, however, naturally led to such at- 

 tempts. Thus Gmelin, in 1825, published a mineral 

 system 5 , which, like that of Berzelius, founded its 

 leading distinctions on the electro-negative, or, as 

 it was sometimes termed, the formative element of 

 bodies ; and, besides this, took account of the num- 

 bers of atoms or proportions which appear in the 



s Zeilsch. der Min. 1825, p. 435. 



