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. 1858 edition. Excerpt: ...and intelligible to us than those of vegetables, from their clear resemblance to the operations which take place in our own bodies, to which our attention has necessarily been strongly directed. 5 llieor. Elem. p. 3o. 7. The question here offers itself, whether this Idea of Natural Affinity is applicable to inorganic as well as to organic bodies;--whether there be Natural Affinities among Minerals. And to this we are now enabled to reply by considering whether or not the principle just stated is applicable in such cases. A_nd the conclusion to which our principle leads us is, --that there are such Natural Affinities among Minerals, since there are different sets of characters which may be taken, (and have by different writers been taken, ) as the basis of classification. The hardness, specific gravity, colour, lustre, crystallization, and other external characters, as they are termed, form, one body of properties according to which minerals may be classified; as has in fact been done by Mohs, Breithaupt, and others. The chemical constitution of the substances, on the other hand, may be made the principle of their arrangement, as was done by Haiiy, and more recently, and on a different scheme, by Berzelius. Which of these is the true and natural classification? To this we answer, that each of these arrangements is true and natural, then, and then only, when it coincides with the other. An arrangement by external characters which gives us classes possessing a common chemical character;--a chemical order which brings together like and separates unlike minerals;--such classifications have the evidence of truth in their agreement with one another. Every classification of minerals which does not aim at and tend to such a result, is so far merely.
