40 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
REVIEW. 
MEMORIALS, Scientific and Literary, of ANDREW CROSSE, the Electrician. 
London — Longman and Co., 1857. 
The writer of this judicious and unpretending work is the widow of the now 
celebrated gentleman, whose biography she has so judiciously penned. " Honour be to 
those, to whom Honour is due !" 
Mrs. Crosse deserves the thanks of the reading, intelligent public, for the honest, 
modest book she has offered to the memory of her deceased husband. 
It is not our intention to enter into the history of Mr. Crosse's school exploits, his 
early taste for electricity and chemistry, his lightning-catching apparatus, or his 
dissection of thunder-clouds. Our aim in the pages of this journal will be rather to 
recommend good books, than to forestall them by extracts. We shall therefore 
merely point out certain Geological hearings developed by the Electrician's experiments, 
and leave our readers to study the work for themselves. 
Mr. Crosse was famous for the nse he made of the electric current in the processes 
of crystallization. From his Voltaic Battery he produced " Two hundred varieties of 
minerals " — Sulphides of Lead, Iron, Copper, Silver, and Antimony, with many other 
compounds, made their appearance in his magic forge ; also " Quartz and Chalcedony, 
with Carbonate of Strontia, Barytes and Lead." 
This part of the subject must ever be most interesting to the Geologist and 
Mineralogist. What problems may not these discoveries of the Electrician unfold, if 
legitimately applied to the question of Mineral Veins, and the much-argued history of 
Slaty Cleavage. Heat, we know, is developed by electricity, when the free passage of 
that power is impeded, and, surely it may have an enormous effect, while thus 
impeded, in changing the position of atoms, in segregation, compression, and 
dOatation. The Galvanic Batteey is far more likely to give the Geologist the clue 
to the history of Cleavage than the compression of mud layers in a tin case or a deal 
box. The development of the little mite " Acarus Crossii," by electricity, caused a 
wonderful sensation some years ago, and we can remember when Mr. Crosse was 
taunted as "Atheist," "an impious philosopher," the "disturber of the peace of 
families," and, "a revUer of our holy religion." After a time, the true revilers 
learned that there was no foundation for their attacks upon a character they could not 
appreciate, and, in justice, they should make themselves acquainted with the history of 
that good man, who was " neither an Atheist, nor a Materialist, nor a self- imagined 
Creator, but an humble and lowly rcverencer of that great Being of whose laws his 
accusers seemed to have so lost sight." 
Men, who write tirades on subjects of which they are utterly and grossly ignorant, 
would do well to learn a lesson from the Life and Memorials of Andrew Crosse. 
