326 Ab'be Rene Just Tlauy. 



ABB£ R^NF, JUST HAUY 



1743-1822. 



The 175th anniversary of the birth of the Abbe Rene Just 

 Haiiy was celebrated on February 28 at the American Museum 

 of Natural History in New York City. Papers were presented, 

 written for the occasion, by Edgar T. Wherry, Herbert P. Whit- 

 lock, George F. Kunz, Edward H. Kraus and Henry S. Wash- 

 ington ; and also one prepared for the meeting by the late L. P. 

 Gratacap. Other gentlemen made informal remarks and mes- 

 sages were read from a number of mineralogists unable to be 

 present. There was also an interesting exhibit of portraits of 

 Haiiy; of early editions of his books in mineralogy, crystallog- 

 raphy and physics ; of mineral species described by him and 

 other valuable memorabilia. 



Professor Alfred Lacroix, who now occupies Haiiy 's chair in 

 mineralogy in Paris, was the honorary chairman of a committee 

 which included many gentlemen connected with the prominent 

 universities in the United States and Canada. The active chair- 

 man was Dr. George F. Kunz,* president of the New York Min- 

 eralogical Club. 



Haiiy 's treatise on mineralogy, published in four volumes and 

 atlas in 1809 (revised in 1822), is one of the most important 

 works in the literature of the subject and will always remain 

 a classic in the science. In crystallography his contributions 

 were even more original and he has justly been called the father 

 of the science. As early as 1784 he published a work entitled 

 "Essai d'une Theorie sur la Structure des crystaux." In this 

 he showed that a few types of symmetry were the basis of all the 

 varieties of crystal forms; further, the fundamental law of 

 rational indices was established by him, and the identity of 

 cleavage in crystals of the same species but of different type, as 

 in calcite, led him to the conception of what he called ' ' molecules 

 integrantes. " His deductions from this original idea are not 

 far removed from the present theory of the molecular structure 

 of crystals. 



* The editor is indebted to Dr. Kunz for the block from which the frontis- 

 piece of this number has been printed. The drawing was designed by 

 F. Massard and engraved on wood by Remi Henri Joseph Delvaux. 



