30 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



even large portions of limbs may be torn off without either 

 the suffering or shock we would expect to meet with. 



M. Benomont mentions the case of a child of nine who 

 clambered up behind a coach and six. One of his legs got 

 between the spokes of the wheel, and before the coachman 

 could stop his lumbering vehicle, the limb was torn off at 

 the knee. The child was taken to a shop, where he shouted 

 so loudly for his leg that they were obliged to bring it and 

 show him it ; having seen it, he entreated them to fasten it 

 on again, so that his mother should know nothing about it. 

 Benomont promised to do so, and the lad was at once tran- 

 quillised and happy. 



I should like to know whether, in those cases where 

 animals tear themselves out of traps, the tendons separate 

 or the muscular fibres, and if they lacerate themselves in- 

 tentionally, or whether it is an accidental circumstance 

 occurring in the struggles of a paroxysm of terror, and do 

 they suffer as little as the human species seem to do from 

 these injuries. 



IV. Some Remarks on Mineralogical Classification. By Andrew 

 Taylor, Esq. 



Analogy is not resemblance. Hence classifications based 

 merely on analogy, however apparently symmetrical, in 

 reality retard the progress of science. Modern chemical 

 research appears to indicate faults of this nature in our pre- 

 sent systems of mineralogical classification. 



We have too exclusively given over minerals to the do- 

 main of the crystallographer and the chemist. Our minera- 

 logical treatises are thus very much a series of mathematical 

 and chemical formulae. We have denned a mineral to be a 

 substance possessing a definite chemical composition and 

 geometric form. Does this definition really meet the cir- 

 cumstances of nature ? Eecent chemical analyses, and the 

 application of the microscope to the problems of physical 

 geology, by Bryson, Sorby, and others, appear to show that 

 this definition must be enlarged. If minerals shall ever 

 serve to indicate the character of the great physical and 



