■0 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
relied mainly upon color, luster, hardness and specific gravity, all of 
which with practice are readily determinable, a very little apparatus of 
the simplest character being required. His success as a mineralogist 
attracted general attention at once and students from every part of 
Europe attended his lectures at Freiberg with the result that his method 
of employing external characters in the determination of minerals was 
promptly and widely disseminated. Mohs, his successor at Freiberg, 
improved Werner's standards and nomenclature, an illustration of which 
is found in the scale of hardness still in use with which the hardness of 
any mineral in question may be brought into comparison with ready 
exactness. 
Every early investigator in mineralogy had felt the necessity for a 
complete system of classification and sought to discover some basis on 
which such a system could be devised. Thus chemistry, crystallography, 
and physical properties had been appealed to in turn for a key to some 
system by which a new specimen could be placed in its proper relations 
to those already fixed in the system and that would enable a student to 
find with certainty the name and place of any specimen that might fall 
into his hands, but each of these failed in some particulars to yield the 
desired result. Hence arose the mixed system of Werner, Hauy, Phillips 
and others, systems that still left much to be desired. Mohs the pupil 
and successor of Werner, earnestly believed that a natural system of min- 
eralogy might be discovered as Linnaeus had done for botany. His inti- 
mate acquaintance with minerals, together with his ardor as a student of 
reform, enabled him to undertake such a work with as great a promise 
of success as could have fallen to any one, but the effort was too much 
for him. 
The new nomenclature proposed by him, requiring as it did a complete 
change of names and terms previously used, overloaded a system which 
of itself failed to impress those interested in the subject with a confi- 
dence in its inherent worth. In like manner Berzelius made two dis- 
tinct attempts to establish a S5^stem based purely on chemical principles, 
.but his system never had the recognition he had looked for. The effort 
in each of the above cited instances, as well as in others of similar purpose 
and scope, while resulting in marked advancement in the status of the 
science, only made it more and more decidedly apparent that no system 
could meet with general acceptance that did not so combine chemical, 
crystallographic, optical and physical properties of minerals as to result 
in a fairly complete harmony and coincidence of the principles of each 
with those of the others. 
It remained for the chemists and mineralogists of the last half of 
the eighteenth century to devote attention to a new question, the origin of 
minerals. In a review of the names of those who have secured eminence 
as contributors to the science of mineralogy, it will be noted that the 
majority of them are French or German in nationality. In like manner 
France and Germany have contributed to the solution of the question 
of the origin of minerals the greater part of effort and consequently 
have won the greater share of the honors.. It has required much patient 
devotion and skill to overcome the difficulties that thickly beset the 
