PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
^ , 
A REVIEW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OP MINERALOGY. 
BY MELVIN F. AEEY. 
Man’s interest in and knowledge of some of the commoner minerals 
such as quartz, mica and calcite, the native metals and the precious 
stones, must have begun practically with the beginning of his occupancy 
of the earth and the command given to him to subdue the earth involved 
bringing its inorganic matters within the range of his knowledge and 
control. Thus early were the physical sciences authoritatively intro- 
duced into the curriculum of the great school of his life. The first 
note of progress is made early in Genesis in the mention of Tubal 
Cain as “an Instructor of every artificer of brass and iron”; the gold, 
bdellium, whatever that may be, and the onyx stone are previously men- 
tioned. The Pentateuch indicates a ready practical knowledge of a half 
dozen metals and as many more precious stones. Theophrastus, a Greek, 
who lived about three hundred years before Christ, has left the earliest 
specific writings upon minerals. The elder Pliny, with his wide embracing 
interest in everj^ phase of natural history, did not neglect the minerals 
and made some interesting records of his observations upon them. 
Avicenna in the eleventh century, so far as is known, made the first 
attempt to classify minerals. His effort was necesarily crude and unsatis- 
factory. However, the number of minerals known and the knowledge 
of uses that could be made of them gradually increased thru the cen- 
turies. Among other causes the eager desire for gold, the belief that the 
baser might be transmuted into it, together with a universal hope that 
somehow a panacea for the ills of the body might be found, stimulated 
research and resulted in the acquirement of a working knowledge of the 
physical and chemical properties of many mineral substances. 
There is little evidence that any well directed effort to make a system- 
atic array of the facts and principles respecting inorganic substances had 
been made before the middle of the eighteenth century. The founda- 
tions of any science are well laid only after the tentative setting forth of 
a variety of theories, the earlier of which are crude often and in the light 
of later established principles, absurdly inadequate. So was it with 
mineralogy. Crystals by their natural beauty early attracted attention. 
At first the seemingly endless diversity of crystalline forms prevented the 
recognition of any connection betw’een fixity of form and kind. Naturally 
the faces were considered in the first attempt to establish this fact and in 
consequence failure resulted. The inherent tendency of the mind to 
generalize and guess rather than to examine and measure, as Whewell 
