362 
SECOND REPOIIT- 18 32. 
lometrical examination, to give a new name to each conjectural 
new mineral, generally the name of a living person, and then to 
give the mineral to Mr. Children to try with the blowpipe, if 
the pieces are sufficient/’ 
The best method (as appears to me,} to control in some de¬ 
gree this inconvenient multiplication of names and species, 
will be to require that the name of the species should contain, 
besides the distinctive term, the name of the order to which it 
appears to belong (as Spar, Oxide, Pyrites), and an adjective 
designating the system or some peculiarity of the crystalliza¬ 
tion (as Hexahedral iron pyrites). The termination of the word, 
where it is a new one, might also be made to imply some di¬ 
stinction. This has been considered a matter of indifference. 
The termination ite has hitherto been most common : but ose, 
ine, and various others, appear to be coming into favour. Thus, 
we have in Beudant’s last edition (1830,) not only leadhillite, 
lanarkite, chamoisite, proustite ; but also scolexerose, opsi- 
mose, argyrose, argyrythose, exanihalose, rhothalose ; dia- 
crase, panabase, neoplase ; neoctese ; rhodoise, stihiconise, 
crocoise, malaconise ; marceline, wilhelmine, carbocerine, my - 
sorine ; exitele, and many more of the same kind; and these 
terminations are employed without any regard either to any 
etymological principle or to any difference in the minerals. 
Even where these names are not superfluous, or superfluously 
long, or superfluously learned, they are superfluously varied; 
and to make the variety depend on caprice alone, is to throw 
away a resource of which chemical nomenclature may teach us 
the value. 
M. Beudant himself has pointed out the advantage which 
would result from retaining in the names of species a substan¬ 
tive marking the order to which the substance belongs (vol. i. 
525) ; thus he would say silicate stilbite, silicate chabasie , 
silicate scolezite, &c. ; carbonate calcaire, carbonate witlierite ; 
sulfate couperose, &c. Mr. Mohs had long before, in the no¬ 
menclature which he proposed, founded on characters altoge¬ 
ther different, proceeded upon this as an indispensable condi¬ 
tion of the specific designations. 
6. Particular Discoveries and Researches. 
Several of the labours of mineralogists which would naturally 
come under this head have already been referred to in speak¬ 
ing of the general views which they illustrate ; and to speak of 
the examinations of particular minerals would lead us into too 
long an enumeration. Such inquiries are best conducted when 
the chemist and mineralogist are joint labourers, as in the ad- 
