Volume 1

Petralogy. A treatise on rocks / By J. Pinkerton.

  • John Pinkerton
Date:
1811
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Petralogy. A treatise on rocks / By J. Pinkerton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Other Thus some writers have been contented to divide minerals objections. Classes^ Orders, and Genera 3 while others, instead of the last, have only Species. Some have Varieties j and Wer¬ ner, with a truly German want of taste, has added Sub-species and Sub-varieties 3 while, as the terms are merely arbitrary, he might have chosen far more classical words to express his distinctions. The cause of this embarrassment, as has often happened in the progress of science, is owing to the pursuit of a routine, of a form, which has become antiquated 3 while the dis¬ coveries being wholly new, a new phraseology was indispen¬ sable. Thus in natural history Linnaeus having established the received classification in botany and zoology, the same terms were introduced into mineralogy, without the simple reflection that the subj^ts were wholly distinct: for the terms, indicating animal and vegetable life, could not without manifest absurdity be applied to dead and inert matter. The consequence was, that as the terms conveyed no idea they were used indifferently, and what was Class with one author became Order with another 3 while the Genus of a third, as / has been already mentioned, became the Species of a fourth: iiiid a few of deeper sagacity began at last to doubt the pro- pi iety of one or other of these appellations. In fact the terms class, order, genus, and species, convey real and vivid ideas of life. We say a class or an order of men, a genus or species of animals, with complete perspicuity and propriety. Nor is the transition to plants in the least violent, as the word species in particular may be here used with some classical authority. But when applied to mineral#' they become wholly arbitrary, and convey none of these sub¬ stantial ideas which belong to real knowdedge, and which the mind grasps, so to speak, as solid and tangible: for as the characteristics are here of a totally different kind from those of animal or vegetable life, they should be distinguished by new and appropriate appellations. As we shall never describe an animal from its texture, fracture, or other distinctions of minerals, so it is equally absurd to describe these by attri-
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