92 
REVIEWS. 
in crystalline scales, having the appearance of micaceous iron ore.” Bro¬ 
mine, too, we are told, is a gas; this Turner tells us “is a liquid , the 
colour of which is blackish red,” and that it is three times heavier than 
water. The gaseous nature of fluorine also is dogmatically taught, 
although every one that has learned chemistry knows that the properties 
of this substance, in an insulated state, are not known, and that Baudri- 
mont’s imperfect guesses on the subject are all we have. 
Are these lessons intended to be the boy’s first introduction to the 
Temple of Science, or merely as interesting summaries of what he may 
have learned before in the lecture-room of his school ? In the former case 
the boy believes all that he is told, and then we have to contemplate the 
melancholy picture of his pure mind being burthened with three—-at any 
rate two—grievous errors, almost before he takes his first step. In the 
latter case, if the effects be not so positively injurious, they are, at least, 
confusing. Which of the two is the boy to believe—his lecturer, who 
exhibits a bluish-black solid in one phial, and a dark red fluid in another, 
calling one iodine and the other bromine, or the so-called leader of science, 
who pronounces them both gases? 
We are exhorted by an ancient moralist to reverence youth. The duty 
is incumbent in intellectual no less than in moral culture. A single error 
or careless statement uttered before a boy tends to check his mental growth 
just as much as an indecent word or a pernicious doctrine to ruin his 
morals. We have dwelt, perhaps, too long upon this topic, and shall, 
therefore, pass over, without criticism, the other parts of this absurd 
attempt at classification. A single error in a book should not procure its 
condemnation—it may occur through inadvertence, through haste in trans¬ 
cribing, or some cause difficult to explain. The fact of its being an error 
of this pardonable kind is not unfrequently proved by a correct statement 
of the same thing in the next paragraph or next page. Can this be the 
case in the present instance? the reader may ask. We regret to say that 
it is not so. The next paragraph shows the error to be deliberate; and 
the remainder of the article abounds in errors which it would be difficult, 
in the same number of pages, to parallel in any other book that ever saw 
the light. We shall dismiss the subject by briefly noticing those which 
are most prominent in the order in which they occur. 
Iron pyrites is called a sulphuret of iron ; it is a bi-sulphuret. 
“ Although each mineral has one simple crystalline form, yet that form 
admits of many modifications, according to the ways in which it may be 
split or cleaved.” This statement is altogether erroneous, although it is 
commonly believed by sciolists. 
