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Updated: September 7, 2025
But besides the study of our national character and institutions, and our agriculture, manufactures, commerce and arts, Britain is deserving of the careful and repeated observation of the natural historian, especially of the mineralogist and geologist; whilst her Roman remains and her Gothic edifices render her interesting to the antiquarian and the man of taste.
To the geologist, the mineralogist, and botanist, especially to the former, France also is an interesting country, especially since Cuvier and other learned men in this department of science, have displayed the stores of important facts which France offers on this subject: her agriculture, and especially her vine districts, present a source of interest of a different kind; while, in the southern provinces, her antiquities, though not numerous, attract by their beauty the man of taste.
This great establishment, the direction of which was confided to Senor Clavijo, author of an elegant translation of the works of Buffon, offered us, it is true, no geological representation of the Cordilleras, but M. Proust, so well known by the great accuracy of his chemical labours, and a distinguished mineralogist, M. Hergen, gave us curious details on several mineral substances of America.
Many have suspected that these regions will prove diamantiferous; and it is reported that an experienced French mineralogist, who has visited the South African diggings, landed at Assini and proposed to canoe up the Tando River to the Tákwá mines, prospecting in search of his specialty.
Not a word broke the silence as by methods wholly new to his spectators he subjected the ore to successive chemical changes, until, within an incredibly short time, the presence of the suspected metals was demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt. "Mineralogist and metallurgist!" exclaimed Mr. Britton delightedly, as he congratulated Darrell upon his success.
Our worthy host delighted my uncle, Professor Hardwigg, by giving him a good map of Iceland, a most important and precious document for a mineralogist. Our last evening was spent in a long conversation with M. Fridriksson, whom I liked very much the more that I never expected to see him or anyone else again. After this agreeable way of spending an hour or so, I tried to sleep.
In view of the immense mineral resources of our country, provision should also be made for the employment of a competent mineralogist and chemist, who should be required, under the direction of the head of the bureau, to collect specimens of the various minerals of our country and to ascertain by careful analysis their respective elements and properties and their adaptation to useful purposes.
The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings.
But to the mineralogist and geologist it is still in a great measure an unexplored field, offering inquiries of the highest interest and importance to their pursuits.
A mineralogist at Besançon had just sent us a collection of siliceous nodules, which I had to classify: so I set to work; I sorted, labelled, and arranged in their own glass case all these hollow specimens, in the cavity of each of which was a nest of little crystals. But this work did not succeed in absorbing all my attention. That old document kept working in my brain.
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