30 Proceedings of the Fioyal 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 hapjjy. 
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. Bj Andkew 
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 crystaliographer and the chemist. Our minera- 
logical treatises are thus very much a series of mathematical 
and chemical formulae. We have defined 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 
