KEYIEWS. 
305 
polisli to Ms "Work, but we fear that he has done so in immaterial points, to 
the exclusion of matters of high general interest and great practical impor- 
tance. It is very well, and no doubt creditable to Mr. Kamsay’s progressive 
tendencies, that he should construct his formulae upon the most approved 
system. Equally well does it reflect upon his knowledge of modern language 
that he should have referred to Rammelsberg’s and Des Cloizeaux's treatises. 
But, while achieving these excellent ends, why did he not cast his eye over 
the work done nearer home ? Why, for instance, did he not give us some 
rough idea of how Sorby has used the spectroscope in the examination of 
minerals ? and, above all, why did he not even hint at the fine and fertile 
field of inquiry which the employment of the microscope has recently 
opened up in the hands of that accomplished mineralogist, our countryman 
Mr. David Forbes ? We should like to know also why Mr. Maskelyne’s 
system of classification has been so religiously adopted. Mr. Maskelyne is 
a savant of much celebrity, but he is by no means infallible, and it is possible, 
even with the dim lights” which illumine science in these days, to conceive 
of an arrangement of minerals, which shall accord more with natural affinities 
than that of the British Museum. The illustrations, too, strike us as imperfect 
in artistic execution, and infinitely too small in number to be of any practical 
value to the student. Again, why is Dr. Wollaston’s Gonometer the only 
one described, and why are such minerals as Polytelite* and Titanoferrite 
omitted? We have also to find fault with the list of localities. For 
instance, on turning to Andalusite, we find the following statement as to its 
distribution : — The Forez mountains of France, near Nantes and Morlaix 
in Bretagne ; at Lisens in the Tyrol ; at Wundsiedel in Bavaria ; at Brauns- 
dorf and Munzig in Saxony ; at Almeria in Andalusia j and various places in 
Brazil.” This is all. Mr. Ramsay would send us to Brazil for a specimen 
of Andalusite, and yet we promise him that in a day’s excursion to Carrig- 
Holahan in County Wicklow (where we were first shown it by the late Dr. 
Kinahan), we could procure him specimens by the hundred. Poor Anda- 
lusite — ‘Hhouart so near and yet so far,” if we would believe Mr. Ramsay. 
Now we have done. We have found all the fault we could, and in conclu- 
sion, we can only say that, notwithstanding these few omissions, Mr. Ram- 
say’s is both a useful and handy little book. 
SIR JOHN RICIIARDSON.t 
A part from the fact that the late Sir John Richardson was a man whose 
scientific reputation and fame as an Artie explorer entitles his name to 
a foremost place in our memoirs, there is something extremely touching 
in the statement of his biographer, that in a correspondence extending over 
* We thought we should perhaps find this mineral noticed under the 
head of Tetrahedrite, but we found no mention of its occurrence in Great 
Britain. 
■\ Life of Sir John Richardson.” Bythe Rev. John Mcllraith. London: 
Longmans, 1868. 
