3^ Review of Chav eland'' s Mineralogy* 



where they flourish, a highly improved state of the arts, and 

 a great degree of intelligence in the community. To this 

 state of things we are now fast approximating. The ardent 

 curiosity regarding these subjects, already enkindled in the 

 public mind, the very respectable attainments in science 

 which we have already made, and our rapidly augmenting 

 means of information in books, instruments, collections, and 

 teachers, afford ground for the happiest anticipations. 



Those sciences which require no means for their inves- 

 tigation beyond books, teachers, and study — those which 

 demand no physical demonstrations, no instruments of re- 

 search, no material specimens : we mean those sciences 

 which relate only to the intellectual and moral character 

 of man, were early fostered, and, in a good degree, matured 

 in this country. Hence, in theology, in ethics, in juris- 

 prudence, and in civil policy, our advances were much ear- 

 lier, and more worthy of respect, than in the sciences relating 

 to material things. In some of these, it is true, we have 

 made very considerable advances, especially in natural 

 philosophy and the mathematics, and their applications to the 

 arts ; and this has been true, in some good degree, for very 

 nearly a century. Natural history has been the most tardy 

 in its growth, and no branch of it was, till within a few years, 

 involved in such darkness as mineralogy. Notwithstanding 

 the laudable efforts of a few gentlemen to excite some taste 

 for these subjects, so little had been eflfected informing col- 

 lections, in kindling curiosity, and diffusing information, that 

 only fifteen years since, it was a matter of extreme difficulty 

 to obtain, among ourselves, even the names of the most common 

 stones and minerals ; and one might inquire earnestly, and 

 long, before he could find any one to identify even quartz, 

 feldspar, or hornblende, among the simple minerals ; or gra- 

 nite, porphyry, or trap, among the rocks. We speak from 

 experience, and well remember with what impatient, but almost 

 despairing curiosity, we eyed the bleak, naked ridges, which 

 impended over the valleys and plains that were the scenes of 

 our youthful excursions. In vain did we doubt whether the 

 glittering spangles of mica, and the still more alluring brilliancy 



