Two tastes, we might even say two passions,-attended him through life, the love of minerals, and the love of method. He was fond of dividing, and of classifying objects, as well as ideas. He was pleased with all those things which could be disposed in regular order; and from this period of his life, he used to purchase books, more for the purpose of arranging them according to a plan, than that of perusing them.

This double propensity was observable in his first work, the Treatise on the External Characters of Minerals, a pamphlet of a few sheets, which he published at Leipsic, at the age of twenty-four.

This work is an analysis and minute subdivision of all the varieties in the apparent properties of minerals; every one of these varieties is marked by a fixed term; and the whole of these terms was intended to form a definite language, by means of which all mineralogists might understand one another.

This was to render Mineralogy a service similar to that which Linnæus had rendered to Botany; but it was a service purchased at the same expence.

It is certain, that this Vocabulary has given more detail and more precision to the science: those who take the trouble to apply it, acquire a surprising facility of distinguishing minerals at first sight; and the attentive examination which is necessary to accommodate the description of these substances to the prescribed formula, has led to the discrimination of many of them, which would otherwise, perhaps, have long remained confounded in the crowd. Yet one cannot help confessing that this idiom, which is necessarily pedantic, and which is confined in its terms of expression as well as in its words, has given to those works which have too servilely employed it, an air of pomposity,―a dryness and a tediousness which are more frequently fatiguing than useful.

These inconveniences, however, were never greatly felt. Technical and semi-barbarous terminologies had been long in fashion. For thirty years the fascinating science of Botany had employed no other language, and Naturalists, already accustomed to so many fetters, were not dismayed by the fear of submitting to another.

We might almost believe, that if any one was dismayed by this new creation, it was Werner himself, and that if he wrote so little after his first Essay, it was that he might escape the trammels which he had imposed upon others. Fortunately this performance, accommodated as it was to the taste of his nation, became a source of fame to himself, and procured for him the means of communicating his ideas in a manner less troublesome to him.

In 1775 he was appointed Professor and Inspector of the Cabinets at Freyberg. It thus became his duty to devote himself without interruption, to that which formed the most lively of his inclinations,-and he was stationed in that canton which was best adapted to satisfy his wishes,-that canton, indeed, of all Europe, in which the greatest variety of minerals is produced, and which has been traversed in all directions, for the greatest length of time, by the labours of mi

ners.

Accordingly, from this period, all his labours were devoted to one object,-to Mineralogy. But this single science, made fruitful by his genius, has become a science of immense extent.

His first step had been to create for it a language; his second necessarily was to form for it a Method. But this second step, which was by much the most important, was also by far the most difficult.

Organised existences have two bases of classification evidently given them by nature,-that of the Individual resulting from the union of all the organs of the body to produce some common action; and that of the Species, resulting from the connections which generation has established among individuals.

More remote resemblances, however natural the relations on which they are founded may be, are always more or less dependant on abstractities of the mind.

In mineralogy, classifiers have sought in vain for some principle which might correspond in all respects with these primary bases. The mysterious power of crystallization is the only one which seems to have some resemblance with the generative power; it even determines the composition of a body, although it does so only within certain limits. Recent experiments have shewn, that there are substances whose crystalliz

ing power is such, that they constrain very considerable quantities of different bodies to accommodate themselves to their form; and it has long been observed in nature, that crystals in all respects are alike; those of sparry iron, for instance, may contain more or less of iron, or more or less of lime, as there may be in two animals of the same species a greater or less quantity of fat, of gelatine, or of the earth of bones.

In mineralogy, then, crystallization ought to be the fundamental principle of the species, of the visible species. But in an immense majority of minerals, the crystalline form is not apparent, and in these cases composition cannot give us this principle, for the composition of such bodies varies still more than that of crystals, and foreign mixtures more easily corrupt their purity.

What then is to be done? We must have recourse to those properties which are most nearly allied to the fundamental principle,―to the cleavage, which is but one of its phenomena, to the fracture, to the hardness, to the lustre, to the effect of the body on the touch, which are its more or less immediate consequences.

This is what Werner has done, not perhaps that he has exactly proceeded upon these reasonings, but he has done it by that sort of delicate instinct which was the peculiar character of his genius. He has the air of considering the identical composition of the molecules as the principle of species, and the point from which he sets out,-perhaps because he really believed himself to have set out from thence; but he never actually applies this principle, except when it is in agreement with the external qualities, and in all cases it is upon these properties that he has founded his distributions, leaving analysis to reconcile itself to them as it may. All the unctuous stones, for instance, are classed in the Magnesian Order, although many of them contain more alumina or silica, than magnesia. He carried this rule so far, that he always persisted in leaving the diamond among the siliceous stones, notwithstanding the incontrovertible experiments which prove that this gem is only a crystallization of carbon. What is more remarkable, is, that among all these external properties, the one on which

he bestowed the least attention, was the most fundamental of the whole, I mean the Crystalline Form.

It is true, that the labours of Werner began ten years before the first attempts of Haüy, and, consequently, almost thirty years before the admirable developement which the doctrine of this great mineralogist has received; and Werner, on his part, has done so much for the progress of the science, that he may easily be excused for not having kept pace with all that his rivals have done; but the inexcusable thing is, that some of his disciples, from a mistaken zeal, and contrary to his uniform avowal, have shewn a desire to depress an order of truths, with which he had made them too little acquainted.

The reverse ought to have happened; the results of the two methods ought to be united and combined: far from being opposed to each other, they are the same in spirit, and are, in reality, but two branches of the same stem. Both of them, without pretending to deny that species do, in some respects, depend on composition; yet establish them without sufficiently consulting chemistry. They suppose for them, tacitly at least, a principle of individuality, which does not belong to the matter that composes them. Chemistry reproaches both of them with sometimes establishing Species gratuitously, and yet she is obliged to confess that both of them have frequently anticipated her, by indicating distinctions of substances, of which she has only been able to give an account by her analysis, after the fact had been ascertained.

The only difference is, that each of these two great mineralogists gives too exclusive a preponderance to those characters which he has most attentively studied.

Haüy, considering crystallisation as alone worthy to be set in competition with analysis, has resorted to methods which are more rigorous and more scientific, but from which a great many substances escape.

Werner, admitting subordinate properties to the same privilege, embraces more easily all kinds of minerals, but he has overlooked what is most profound and mysterious in their nature; and when, in the conflict of these two methods, he has endeavoured to set his subordinate properties in opposition not merely to analysis, but to crystallisation itself, he has almost al

ways brought himself under the condemnation of that fundamental law, of which the properties he wished to employ are only corollaries.

Werner had thus devised a language for describing minerals; -he had arranged them;-he had assigned to each its distinctive characters, and had, in this manner, formed a Mineralogy, strictly so called, or what he named Oryctognosy, that is to say, the knowledge of fossils.

The history of their arrangement on the globe, or what he called Geognosy, that is the knowledge of the Earth, was the third point of view under which he considered them.

The Earth, in fact, is composed of mineral masses, and modern observers have satisfied themselves, that these masses are not thrown together at random.

Pallas, during his laborious travels to the extremity of Asia, had remarked that their superposition could be referred to fundamental laws.

Saussure and De Luc in traversing, in many directions, the most elevated mountain chains of Europe, had confirmed these joint observations.

Werner, without quitting his small province, has carried the knowledge of these laws to its utmost, and he has been able to read, in these laws, the history of all the revolutions of which they are the work.

Tracing every bed throughout its whole length, without permitting himself to be led astray by the interruptions which divide it, by the mountain crests and different elevations which rise above it, he has determined, in some sort, their different ages, and the age of all the accessory matters which are intermingled with the principal substances.

The different fluids by which the globe has been surrounded, -the changes of their composition, the violent movements by which each change has been accompanied ;-all of these have been found written, to his eye, in the monuments which they have left.

A universal and tranquil ocean deposites, in great masses, the primitive rocks, those rocks which are distinctly crystallised, and in which silica is the first predominating ingredient. Granite forms the base on which all the others rest. To granite