Crystallogcnsis. — Hensoldt. 801 
Morton county wells, at least till future search shall make 
more probable that it is duo to the usual causes of artesian 
wells. 
At some future time we may endeavor to classify all the 
artesian wells of Kansas with reference to the efficient causes 
of their fiowage. At present we must be content with here 
suggesting the three forms of hydrostatic, gas, and rock- 
2)ressure as these efficient causes and especially to call atten- 
tion to the last two in the cases of deep wells of small outflow. 
CRYSTALLOGENESIS. 
By Dr. H. Hensoldt. 
School of Mines, Columbia College, New York. 
I. 
" We live in that predicament that our facts have outstrip- 
ped our knowledge and are now encumbering its march. The 
publications of our scientific institutions and of our scientific 
authors overflow with minute and countless details, which per- 
plex the judgment and which no memory can retain. In vain 
do we demand that they should be generalized and reduced in- 
to order. Instead of that the heap continues to swell. We 
want ideas and get more facts. We hear constantly of what 
nature is doing, but we rarely hear of Avhat man is thinking. 
We are in possession of a huge and incoherent mass of obser- 
vations, which have been stored up with great care, but which 
until they are connected by some presiding idea, will be utter- 
ly useless." 
This passage from Buckles' "History of Civilization in 
England"' is brought to my mind whenever I hear of the. dis- 
covery of another asteroid, a new mineral, parasite or hitherto 
undescribed fungus. It would seem as if the vast majority of 
our observers beheld in the mere recording of trivial facts the 
sole aim and end of science. Witness the large and pitiful 
army of our museum-zoologists and herbarium-botanists . 
Is it because their mental caliber is such that they recognize 
the hopelessness of any other course in their frantic struggle 
for temporary notoriety? 
Crystallography, on account of its numerous inherent com- 
plexities and difficulties is a subject so utterly distasteful to 
even many "mineralogists" that a general diffusion of its teach- 
ings can never l)o hoped for, yet it is amazing to notice the 
' Vol. Ill, p. o79, London, 1873 
