Abstract
THIS is not a very satisfactory book. It consists of an alphabetical arrangement of minerals with a brief description of each species, the species selected being those which the author regards as volcanic minerals. Inspite of his title of “member of several learned societies,” we take leave to doubt whether he has any clear idea of what a volcanic mineral is. A great part of his book is devoted to minerals which, like the zeolites, are not original volcanic products, but the result of subsequent changes. Any mineral which he can discover to have been ever found in an eruptive rock, he sets down in his pages as one of the “minerals of volcanoes.” There is no critical faculty shown in discriminating between the primary and secondary ingredients in volcanic rocks. A good work on volcanic minerals properly so called, with a minute and exhaustive examination of their microscopic structure, and a philosophic induction therefromas to some of the conditions under which volcanic action must take place, would be a great boon to science. But it is not to Dr. Landgrebe that we must look for such a treatise. He tells us that perhaps he might have delayed the publication of his volume until he could take advantage of the results which the new development of mineralogy through the application of the microscope promises to furnish; but as he found the delay might prove a tedious one, he decided not to wait any longer, but to present his labour of “Lust und Liebe” to the indulgent criticism of the public. Even so ; such is the history of too many books in the scientific as well as in other branches of literature.
Mineralogie der Vulcane.
Von G. Landgrebe. (Cassel and Leipzig, 1870. London: Williams and Norgate.)
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G., A. Mineralogie der Vulcane . Nature 3, 485 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/003485c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003485c0