Miscellanies. 219 



mineral. These results certainly do not remove it far from chloritoid, 

 as analyzed by BonsdorfT, and to which Dana* is inclined to refer it; but 

 the complete identity of the two minerals cannot be established, until we 

 have a more perfect description of the chloritoid as to its physical char- 

 acters. But in any case, the name of Masonite should take the pre- 

 cedence, and chloritoid be viewed as only a variety of it more recently 

 discovered. There is considerable difference in the two analyses given 

 of chloritoid, which renders it doubtful whether it be strictly a definite 

 compound. F. Algek. 



4. Tenorite. — This name, in honor of a distinguished Neapolitan 

 botanist, has been given to the black oxyd of copper by M. S. Semmola, 

 who has found the mineral crystallized among the scoriaceous lavas 

 of Vesuvius. It occurs in minute scales from a twentieth to a third of 

 an inch in diameter, often hexagonal and sometimes triangular. Color 



j steel gray. Lustre bright. Faintly subtranslucent to opaque. It is 

 [usually associated with common salt, and is supposed by Semmola to 

 result from the reaction of soda, pure or in the form of a carbonate, 

 on the chloride or carbonate of copper, and to be sublimed along with 

 the salt— Bullet, de la Soc. Geol de France, 1. 13, 1841 a 1842, p. 206. 



5. Sillimanite. — Dr. Thomson of Glasgow writes to Mr. Alger — " I 

 have been induced by your observations to make an analysis of Silli- 

 manite, to determine whether it contained zirconia. I employed some 

 very pure specimens of crystals, but could not detect any traces of that 

 earth in the mineral. Dr. Muir's analysis therefore must have been 

 inaccurate." It is satisfactory to have a disclaimer of this singular 

 analysis from Dr. Thomson himself. The point however had been 

 abundantly proved before, by ourselves, Mr. Norton, and Mr. Hayes, in 

 the several analyses (q. v.) published in our i-ecent volumes. 



6. Mr. Phillips's Mineralogical Collection. — The original collection 

 of minerals formed by the late Wm. Phillips, Esq. is at present at the 

 Medical Institution in Liverpool ; and Francis Archer, Esq. has recently 

 been appointed to arrange it. The collection was valued by Sowerby 

 at ^1300, but was afterwards purchased by Dr. Rutter for ^400, and 

 by him it was bequeathed to the Institution. A. 



7. Faye''s Comet. — The comet noticed in our last volume (p. 419) as 

 having been discovered by Mr. Hamilton L. Smith at Cleveland, Ohio, 

 turns out to be that of Faye, who gives the following as its elements, in 

 the Comptes Rendus for September 30th, 1844, p. 665, from observa- 

 tions made in the observatory at Paris : — 



* Mineralogy, second edition, p. 523. 



