Encyclopaedia Americana: a popular dictionary of arts, sciences, literature, history, politics and biography, brought down to the present time : including a copious collection of original articles in American biography : on the basis of the seventh edition of the German Conversations-Lexicon (Volume 13).

Date:: 1830-33

Credit: Encyclopaedia Americana: a popular dictionary of arts, sciences, literature, history, politics and biography, brought down to the present time : including a copious collection of original articles in American biography : on the basis of the seventh edition of the German Conversations-Lexicon (Volume 13). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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WENTVvORTH—WERNER. We.ntworth. (See Slrqford.) Werf, Adrian van der, a Dutch paint- er, born near Rotterdam, in 1G59, of poor parents, was fii-st instructed in liis art by Piccolett, a portrait painter, and after- wards became a pupil of Van der Neer. Having setded at Rotterdam, he obtained great reputation as a painter of portraits, and executed a piece for Steen, a rich rnerchant of Amsterdam, which procured him the patronage of the elector palatine. That prince, having visited Holland witli his family in 1G96, went to Rotterdam, and ordered Van der Werf to paint for him the Judgment of Solomon, and his [lortrait. The artist toolc the pictures to Diisseldorf when they were finished; and the elector wished to retain him in liis service, but he only engaged himself for six months in the year, receiving a handsome pension. In 1703, he went to present to his patron his Christ carried to the Sepulchre, which is regarded as his best production. He was honored with knight- hood by the elector, who treated him with great liberality, augmenting his pension, and bestowing on him many marks of his esteem. He died at Rotterdam, Nov. 12, 1722. Van der Werf was })articularly noted for his small historical pieces, which are most exquisitely finished, and which are still in high request, though his repu- tation is not quite equal to what it was during his Ufe.—His brother and pupil, Peter van der Werf, painted portraits and conversation pieces, and was a very able artist. He died in 1718, aged fifty- five. Werner, Abraham Gottlob; a celebrat- ed mineralogist, born in Germany, Sept. 25, 1750. His father was overseer of iron works in Upper Lusatia; and the son, being intended for the same employment, was sent, after some previous educa- tion at school, to the mineralogical acade- my at Freyberg. Thence he removed to Leipsic, where he applied himself to nat- ural history and juris{)rudence, but more especially to the former, which he found the most attractive. The external char- acters of mineral bodies attracted much of his attention ; and, in 1774, he publish- ed a work on that subject, considered as the basis of his oryctognostic or mineral- ogical system. It has been translated into various languages, and adopted and com- mented on l)y other writers; but the au- thor could never be pci-suaded to publish a new and enlarged edition. Soon after this })ublication, Werner was invited to become keeper of the cabinet of natural history at Freyberg, and to deliver lectures VOL. XIII. 11 on mmcralogy. In ] 780, he published the fii-st part of a translation of Cronstadt'sMin- eralogy; and, in his annotations on this work, he gave the first sketch of his mine- ralogical system, and published many de- scriptions in conformity with the methods proposed in his treatise on extcmal charac- ters. In ] 791, appeared h is Catalogue of the mineral Collection of Pabst von Ohain. Besides his lectures on mineralogy, he also delivered lectures on the art of mining, which he rendered j)cculiarly intelligible and interesting by his simplification of the machinei7, and by drawings and fig- ures. His system of geognosy, or geolo- gy, was unfolded only in his lectures ; but those he caused to be written out by his approved pupils, and, revising them him- self, he communicated authority to their manuscripts. Many pails of these lec- tures have been published in different countries. Werner himself likewise pub- lished some mineralogical papers in tho Miner's Journal ; and, in 1791, appeared his New Theory of the Formation of Metallic Veins, which was translated both into French and English. He was nom- inated counsellor of the mines of Saxony in 1792, and had a great share in the direction of the academy of mineralogy, and in the administration of public works. The cabinet of minerals which he had collected was unrivalled for its completeness and arrangement, consisting of one hundred thousand specimens. This he sold to the mineralogical acade- my, for about $28,000, reserving the interest of $23,000 as an annuity to him- self and his sister, who had no children, and at her death to revert to the academy of Freyberg. He died, unmarried, in August, 1817. A knowledge of the Wer- nerian mineralogy was first introduced into England by Kirwan; but a more complete view of it is exhibited in pro- fessor Jameson's System of Mineralogy, 1804, second edition, 1817. As a geolo- gist, Werner is scarcely entitled to the merit of originality, as his geognosy con- sisted more in the invention of a new language adapted to support a theory, than in the exhibition of novel facts, or the discovery of a new and j)ractical method of investigation. (See Geology.) But the science of mineralogy is highly indebted to his labors; and in having given a definite and systematic arrange- ment of mineral bodies, showing their characteristic analogies, he has done that for the branch of natural knowledge he cultivated, which Linneeus did for the science of botany, and thus attached a

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