Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ...surpassing skill. And though it cannot be doubted, that the chemical views which prevailed around him had a latent influence on his classification in some cases, he resolutely refused to bend his system to the authority of chemistry. Thus," when he was blamed for having, in opposition to the chemists, plf;ed diamond among the earthy fossils, he persisted in declaring that, mineralogically considered, it was a stone, and could not be treated as anything else. This was an indication to that tendency, which, under his successor, led to a complete separation of the two grounds of classification. But before we proceed to this, we must notice what was doing at this period in other parts of Europe. Hatty's System.--Though Werner, on his own principles, ought tc Cut. SI. u 814 ' Flinch, p. 52. Frisch. p. 68. have been the first person to sec the immense value of the most marked of external characters, crystalline form, he did not, in fact, attach much importance to it. Perhaps ho was in some measure fascinated by a fondness for those characters which he had himself systematized, and the study of which did not direct him to look for geometrical relations. However this may be, the glory of giving to Crystallography its just importance in Mineralogy is due to France: and the Treatise of Hatly, published in 1801, is the basis of the best succeeding works of mineralogy. In this work, the arrangement is professedly chemical; and the classification thus established is employed as the means of enunciating crystallographic and other properties. " The principal object of this Treatise," says the author,7 " is the exposition and development of a method founded on certain principles, which may serve as a framework for all the knowledge which...
