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Petrifaction is a subject in which mineralogists have perhaps wandered more widely from the truth than in any other part of natural history; and the reason is plain.
"Such are the effects," continued she, "of intoxication from the water of the golden fountain. They contain in solution so large a quantity of the matter which by mineralogists is denominated silex, that once allow the senses to be overpowered by repeated draughts, and in a few hours the effects which you behold will be produced.
After a night of feverish tossing on his bed he arose and went to the cellar to gloat upon his wealth. The light of dawn fell on a heap of gray dust, a few brassy looking particles showing here and there. The curse of the ghost had been of power and the silver was silver no more. Mineralogists say that the nodules are iron pyrites. Perhaps so; but old residents know that they used to be silver.
Anyhow, the deputation of distinguished geologists and mineralogists from Paris and Berlin were there in the most magnificent and appropriate dress, for there are no men who like wearing their decorations so much as the men of science as anybody knows who has ever been to a soiree of the Royal Society.
At Mompava there are said to be very rich copper mines; but from want of population, a vigorous government, and scientific mineralogists, little is to be hoped from them at the present day. At Pulo Bongorong, near Borneo Proper, there is plenty of loadstone found.
Here also, as in several other settlements, hatchets and wedges of jade have been observed of a kind said not to occur in Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Europe, and which some mineralogists would fain derive from the East; amber also, which, it is supposed, was imported from the shores of the Baltic.
This circumstance assimilates the breccia to that recent sandstone called by the German mineralogists nagelfluhe, which covers so great a part of Switzerland to the height of a thousand toises, without presenting any trace of marine productions.
A large company of artists, men of science, and gardeners accompanied the expedition for the collection of specimens, the making of charts and drawings, and the systematic observation of phenomena. There were two astronomers, two hydrographers, three botanists, five zoologists, two mineralogists, five artists, and five gardeners.
Why, when Professor Schleiermacher made his bow to assembled science at Lancaster Gate, had we not strictly inquired how far he was personally known beforehand to Sir Adolphus Cordery and the other mineralogists?
Bronze, a mixture of copper and tin, was used by the ancients for the manufacture of all kinds of edge-tools, long before iron was smelted from the earth in which it is invariably found; and mineralogists of the present day are surprised to see the works which the ancients executed with a material, that no modern workmen could use as a cutting medium.
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