Excerpt from Practical Mineralogy; Or, a Compendium of the Distinguishing Characters of Minerals: By Which the Name of Any Species or Variety in the Mineral Kingdom May Be Speedily Ascertained Xlized minerals alone belong to mineralogy as a science; that amorphous minerals are mere aggregates of minute crystalline particles incapable of description or arrangement. But supposing this to be a correct view of the subject, still, if mineralogy were to be confined to mere crystallized bodies, it would be divested of the greatest part of its utility; for a very great proportion of those minerals that are of the greatest utility to man, and which, therefore, it is peculiarly important to be able to distinguish from others, are seldom found in the state of regular crystals. How often do the ores of tin, copper, lead, and iron occur in an amor phous state? And were a mineralogist incapable of distinguishing them from each other, and from other minerals, except in the rare cases when they assumed a regularly crystallized form, his know ledge would be useless as far as the important arts of mining and metallurgy are Concerned. If we now regard'this system as a classification for the group ing together of mineral substances after a certain natural order, the case will be still worse. Far from being a natural system, it is a system of nature perverted; unreal and unsatisfactory; a system of what things seem to be, not of what they are. As though the founder, incapable of following nature through its mighty and wonderful paths, had risen up in rebellion against it, and endeavoured (how vainly ) to restrain it within the bounds of his own cramped imagination; and it only shows how the human mind, even when as highly gifted and talented as that of Mons, may be curbed and led away by, its own preconceived prejudices. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.