Boston, published by Cummings and Hilliard, No. 1, Cornhill. Printed by Hilliard & Metcalf, at the University Press, Cambridge, New England. 1816.
This work has been for some time before the public, and it has been more or less the subject of remark in our various journals. It is, however, so appropriate to the leading objects of this Journal, that we cannot consider ourselves as performing labours of supererogation while we consider the necessity, plan, and execution of the treatise of Professor Cleaveland.
An extensive cultivation of the physical sciences is peculiar to an advanced state of society, and evinces, in the country where they flourish, a highly improved state of the arts, and a great degree of intelligence in the community. To this state of things we are now fast approximating. The ardent curiosity regarding these subjects, already enkindled in the public mind, the very respectable attainments in science which we have already made, and our rapidly augmenting means of information in books, instruments, collections, and teachers, afford ground for the happiest anticipations.
Those sciences which require no means for their investigation beyond books, teachers, and study—those which demand no physical demonstrations, no instruments of research, no material specimens: we mean those sciences which relate only to the intellectual and moral character of man, were early fostered, and, in a good degree, matured in this country. Hence, in theology, in ethics, in jurisprudence, and in civil policy, our advances were much earlier, and more worthy of respect, than in the sciences relating to material things. In some of these, it is true, we have made very considerable advances, especially in natural philosophy and the mathematics, and their applications to the arts; and this has been true, in some good degree, for very nearly a century. Natural history has been the most tardy in its growth, and no branch of it was, till within a few years, involved in such darkness as mineralogy. Notwithstanding the laudable efforts of a few gentlemen to excite some taste for these subjects, so little had been effected in forming collections, in kindling curiosity, and diffusing information, that only fifteen years since, it was a matter of extreme difficulty to obtain, among ourselves, even the names of the most common stones and minerals; and one might inquire earnestly, and long, before he could find any one to identify even quartz, feldspar, or hornblende, among the simple minerals; or granite, porphyry, or trap, among the rocks. We speak from experience, and well remember with what impatient, but almost despairing curiosity, we eyed the bleak, naked ridges, which impended over the valleys and plains that were the scenes of our youthful excursions. In vain did we doubt whether the glittering spangles of mica, and the still more alluring brilliancy of pyrites, gave assurance of the existence of the precious metals in those substances; or whether the cutting of glass by the garnet, and by quartz, proved that these minerals were the diamond; but if they were not precious metals, and if they were not diamonds, we in vain inquired of our companions, and even of our teachers, what they were.
We do not forget that Dr. Adam Seybert, in Philadelphia; Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, in New-York; and Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, in Harvard University, began at an earlier period to enlighten the public on this subject; they began to form collections; Harvard received a select cabinet from France and England; and Mr. Smith, of Philadelphia, (although, returning from Europe fraught with scientific acquisitions, he perished tragically near his native shores,) left his collection to enrich the Museum of the American Philosophical Society.
Still, however, although individuals were enlightened, no serious impression was produced on the public mind; a few lights were indeed held out, but they were lights twinkling in an almost impervious gloom.
The return of the late Benjamin D. Perkins, and of the late Dr. A. Bruce, from Europe, in 1802 and 3, with their collections, then the most complete and beautiful that this country had ever seen; the return of Colonel Gibbs, in 1805, with his extensive and magnificent cabinet; his consequent excursions and researches into our mineralogy; the commencement, about this time, of courses of lectures on mineralogy, in several of our colleges, and of collections by them and by many individuals; the return of Mr. Maclure, in 1807; his Herculean labour in surveying the United States geologically, by personal examination; and the institution of the American Journal of Mineralogy, by Dr. Bruce, in 1810;—these are among the most prominent events, which, in the course of a few years, have totally changed the face of this science in the United States.
During the last ten years, it has been cultivated with great ardour, and with great success: many interesting discoveries in American mineralogy have been made; and this science, with its sister science, Geology, is fast arresting the public attention. In such a state of things, books relating to mineralogy would of course be eagerly sought for.
No work, anterior to Kirwan, could be consulted by the student with much advantage, on account of the wonderful progress, which, within forty or fifty years, has been made in mineralogy. Even Kirwan, who performed a most important service to the science, was become, in some considerable degree, imperfect and obsolete; the German treatises, the fruitful fountains from which the science had flowed over Europe, were not translated; neither were those of the French; and this was the more to be regretted, because they had mellowed down the harshness and enriched the sterility of the German method of description, besides adding many interesting discoveries of their own. It is true we possessed the truly valuable treatise of Professor Jameson, the most complete in our language. But the expense of the work made it unattainable by most of our students, and the undeviating strictness with which the highly respectable author has adhered to the German mode of description, gave it an aspect somewhat repulsive to the minds of novices, who consulted no other book. We are, however, well aware of the value of this work, especially in the improved edition. It must, without doubt, be in the hands of every one who would be master of the science; but it is much better adapted to the purposes of proficients than of beginners.
The mineralogical articles dispersed through Aikin's Dictionary are exceedingly valuable; but, from the high price of the work, they are inaccessible to most persons.