THE 
EDINBURGH 
PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 
Art. I .-^General Reflections on various important subjects in 
Mineralogy. By Frederick Mohs, Esq., Professor of Mi- 
neralogy at Freyberg, Fellow of the Iloyal Society of Edin- 
burgh, — of the Wernerian Natural History Society, &c* 
Communicated by the Author, 
i F we inquire into die origin of the science generally design 
Hated by the name of Natural History, we find that it consists 
of an aggregate of information, derived, by observation and ex- 
periment, from several of the natural bodies which surround us, 
although, at first, it was not, and could not, have been the in- 
tention to unite the various results into a science. The obser- 
vations made at first chiefly regarded the mode of living, the 
age, the station, or place of abode, of animals and plants, but 
especially their usefulness or obnoxiousness to man : even mine- 
rals, which, at that early stage of information, could scarcely 
possess any further interest, were taken into consideration, with 
respect to this latter circumstance. 
The mode by which the information, thus collected, could be 
communicated to others, was that of narration ; and as History 
is the word commonly used for designating whatever is com- 
prised in a narration, this aggregate of information received the 
name of Natural History, or the History of Natural Produc- 
tions ; a name which was afterwards transferred to a science al- 
together different from any thing that could properly be called 
History. 
VOL. XIII. NO. 26 . OCTOBER 1825 . P 
