Tables for the Determination of Minerals by Those Physical Properties Ascertainable by the Aid of Such Simple Instruments as Every Student in the Field Should Have with Him

Excerpt from Tables for the Determination of Minerals by Those Physical Properties Ascertainable by the Aid of Such Simple Instruments as Every Student in the Field Should Have With Him: Based on the Table of Weisbach, Enlarged, and Furnished With a Set of Mineral Formulas, a Column of Specific Gravities, and One of the Characteristic Blowpipe Reactions

It is with great satisfaction that I note in the lately-issued text-book of Miner alogy by Mr. E. S. Dana, on the plan and with the cc-operation of Prof. J as. D. Dana (new York, Wiley, that the principle which must govern the construction of mineral formulas, the unity of the mineral molecule, - and which I so strongly emphasized in the preface to the first edition, finds abundant recognition throughout. Not indeed everywhere, and not in the form of rational, but generally in that of empirical formulas: yet this latter form of stating the constituents of a mineral seems vastly preferable to that of separate compounds united-by the sign plus It cannot be doubted, either, that until we are more advanced in our knowledge of the conditions affecting the existence of the gaseous, the liquid, and more especially the solid molecule, the safest method of writing a mineral formula is the empirical. But who would shut his eyes to the lines of order which these rational formulas point out, im erfect though they be?

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