26 
men of learning, aided the progress of the science by their well 
directed labours. 
One work, published in 1^26, deserves to be particularly noticed ; 
since it plainly demonstrates, that learning may not be sufficient to 
prevent an unsuspecting man, from being betrayed by too easy cre- 
dulity. It is worthy of being mentioned, on another account^: it 
appeared that the censure and ridicule, to which its author was 
exposed, served, not only to render his contemporaries less liable to 
imposition; but also more cautious in indulging in unsupported 
hypotheses. The work is intitled JLithographice JVircehurgensis 
Spechnen Primwn, and was written by Dr. John Bartholomew Adam 
Beringer. We are here presented with the representation of stones, 
said to bear petrifactions of birds ; some with spread, others with 
closed wings : bees and wasps, both resting in their curiously con- 
structed cells, and in the act of sipping honey from expanded 
flowers : spiders weaving their webs : moths and butterflies engen- 
dering: and, to complete the absurdity, petrifactions representing 
the sun, moon, stars, and comets, with many others too monstrous 
and ridiculous to deserve even mention. These stones, artfully pre- 
pared, had been deposited, purposely to dupe the enthusiastic 
collector, in a mountain which he was in the habit of exploring. 
Unfortunately, the silly and cruel trick succeeded so far, as to 
occasion to him, who was the subject of it, so great a degree of 
mortification, as, it is said, shortened his days. 
In the middle of the eighteenth century a more strict and close 
mode of philosophising, than had been hitherto employed, appears 
to have been generally adopted. This is evident in almost all the 
writings which were published on these subjects at that period: 
correctness of judgment, and propriety in arrangement, became 
now generally conspicuous. This we can, without the least hesita- 
tion, attribute, in a great measure, to the advantages which this 
science derived, with mineralogy, from the well directed labours of 
