400 — JMiseellantes. 
affinities are overlooked. It is to be tested only, as it does, or does not, afford the 
most direct means in leading to the names of unknown minerals. The properties 
upon which it is founded are of easy observation and possessed of sufficient con- 
stancy: their examination does not involve a knowledge of other sciences, or require 
an inconvenient minuteness of detail. What is more easy, for example, than to set- 
tle whether a mineral be crystallized, and if not, whether it yield a regular solid by 
cleavage? These are the only questions to be solved in the determination of the 
class. And if due attention has been paid by the pupil to the section on Crystallog- 
raphy, the orders in the two first classes may be ascertained with nearly the same 
degree of ease. The system of crystallization, in most cases, is a problem to which 
the lowest attainments in Mineralogy are adequate ; or rather, it is one, which, until 
the pupil is able to master, he is unprepared to take a single step to advantage in 
the study of the mineral kingdom. The orders in the remaining class need only te 
be mentioned, to be recognized.” , 
The arrangement of the species in each order is in a series, de- 
pending upon the property of hardness, except in the two last orders 
of the third class, where it depends upon the property of specific 
gravity. 
“‘ Where the series depends upon the property of hardness, the orders commence 
with the softest species, and terminate with the hardest: in the other case, it begins 
with the lightest and terminates with the heaviest. 
«¢ Had it promised an additional convenience, in arriving at the names of minerals, 
through the use of this system, it would have been easy to have divided the orders 
into genera, depending upon fixed degrees of hardness and specific gravity. The 
idea of a series within the genus, however, founded upon these properties, seemed 
preferable, inasmuch as it possesses every possible facility which would attend the 
division in question, besides the advantage of rendering the arrangement considera- 
bly less complicated, both as respects the nomenclature and practice.” — 
Part III. explains the object of nomenclature in general, and of 
systematic and trivial nomenclature in particular ; and it is stated for 
the following reasons that the nomenclature in an analytical system 
must be a trivial one. 
«In an analytical system, we must not look for similarity among the species of 
any one class or order ; to name the species in such a manner as to suggest the class 
and order to whieh they individually belong, instead of serving to illustrate or sim- 
plify the general survey of the mineral kingdom, would only produce confusion. 
A designation, therefore, wholly irrespective of any such relations should be em- 
ployed. All that we demand of nomenclature, so far as the analytical method is 
concerned, is the simplest designation of the object possible, from which we may 
be pointed forward to the descriptions for the remaining information of which we 
are in search; we have no interest in being carried back to the artificial ideas by 
whose means we have accomplished this preliminary step. 
“It is true, provided the names employed in the analytical method do not lead us. 
back to the orders and classes of that method, it would not be very objectionable 
what denominations were employed, whether those of the systematic nomenclature, 
or the chemical names, so far as minerals are possessed of them; yet, as the object 
of this method is only a preliminary step, those which are the shortest and most 
convenient seem preferable, and these are the trivial. names. 
