IS BULLETIN OF THE 



on the direction which mineralogy took in France, traces of which 

 may to-day yet be observed in the character of their books upon 

 that subject. 



A new era was started by Werner, who introduced a natural 

 system, and showed his views very clearly in a little book that 

 appeared in 1774. He recognizes the minerals by exterior clia- 

 racteristics — lustre, fracture, color, hardness, sound, &e. — and 

 even touch, temperature, weight, and taste help hira to discrimi- 

 nate. His system was first published by Emmerling in 1793, and 

 later by Hoffmann and Breithaupt, 1811-1813. He paid great 

 attention to the crystallographic forms of minerals, and very care- 

 fully described them. In his scholar, Prof. Weiss, of Berlin, his 

 system received a great support, and Weiss, as an excellent crys- 

 tallographer, paid the necessary attention to that branch of min- 

 eralogical science. Mohs, also a scholar of Werner, in the same 

 way followed tlie method of a natural classification, going so far 

 as to almost entirely neglect the chemical composition of minerals. 

 Haidinger made many valuable investigations regarding the 

 physical qualities of minerals. C. F. Naumann, in his " Elemente 

 der Mineralogie," 1846, took the same course, differing, however, 

 from Weiss in the crystallographic part. Quenstedt, a scholar 

 of Weiss, adopted the classification of minerals as proposed by 

 him in his "Handbuch der Mineralogie," 1854, and his text-book, 

 together with that of Naumann, are at the present time most 

 extensively in use at institutions of learning throughout Germany. 



At the same time, parallel with the work done by Werner and 

 others, a new basis for the classification of minerals had been 

 adopted by several mineralogists ; it was the chemical basis. 

 Wallerius of Sweden, in his "Mineralkicket," 1747, and Axel von 

 Cronstedt in his "Forsok til Mineralogie," 1758, proposed a class- 

 ification of minerals based upon their chemical constituents. In 

 1782 Bergman published the "Sciagraphia regne Mineralis," 

 which is generally regarded as the first chemical system. Vau- 

 quelin and Klaproth furnished a large number of very valuable 

 analyses, so that the necessity of combining chemistry with min- 

 eralogy became more and more apparent. Berzelius first intro- 

 duced the chemical symbols, and in 1815 published a classification 

 of minerals based upon chemical composition. In 1841 Ram- 

 melsberg wrote the first edition of his excellent "Mineralchemie," 

 and in 1852 Gustav Rose published his Crj^stallo-chemical Sys- 

 tem. In this country chemical principles in classification of min- 

 erals have been very ably and successfully applied by Prof Dana, 

 whose present " System of Mineralogy" ranks among the highest. 

 Dana makes the acid constituent the basis of his classification. 



Hauy recognizes four classes : 



I. Sitbdances containing acid — 



Lime, Baryta, &c. 

 II. Earthy substances — 



Quartz, Zircon, &c. 



