Minerals

There were no men on board the fleet who had any knowledge of useful sciences, such as botany, geology, mineralogy, and natural history; and consequently there was no means of ascertaining the resources of the country, and applying the knowledge to the wants of the settlement.
— G. B. Barton, History of New South Wales from the Records, Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1889, 36.

It cannot therefore be doubted that the extensive volcanic elevations constituting the high table-land of Armenia and the island Iceland have flowed from sources which were chemically identical… the mineralogical differences between those Caucasian and Icelandic rocks which present the same mean composition, are not less marked than those observed among other ferruginous rocks of plutonic origin.
— Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811 – 1899), Poggendorff’s Annalen, 1851, Scientific Memoirs, edited by Tyndall and Francis, 1853.

Geology is related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. A historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist should be well-versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature.
— Sir Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875), quoted in A Thousand and One Gems of English Prose, selected by Charles Mackay, (19th century?).

The series of changes which fossil bodies are destined to undergo, does not cease with their elevation above the level of the sea; it assumes, however, a new direction, and from the moment that they are raised to the surface, is constantly exerted in reducing them again under the dominion of the ocean. The solidity is now destroyed which was once acquired in the bowels of the earth; and as the bottom of the sea is the great laboratory where loose materials are mineralized and formed into stone, the atmosphere is the region where stones are decomposed, and again resolved into earth.
— John Playfair (1748 – 1819), Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, reprinted in A Treasury of Scientific Prose, 191-2, Little, Brown, 1963.

… in the field some amount of information concerning igneous rocks can be obtained by rubbing down the chip on a grindstone and using a whetstone, carborundum file, or water of Ayr stone for the final grinding. By these and other methods … there are obtained slices of rocks which, though thick, uneven, scratched, and all that is bad, from the point of view of the professional maker of thin sections, are nevertheless capable of yielding much information. With a pocket lens it is possible to make out from such a ‘thin’ section the nature of the minerals present, the texture and the nature of the rock.
— Frank Rutley (1842 – 1904), Elements of Mineralogy, 22nd edition, 1915, 104.

‘Hard,’ replied the Dodger. ‘As nails,’ added Charley Bates.
— Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870), Oliver Twist, ch. 9.

One can descend by imperceptible degree from the most perfect creature to the most shapeless matter, from the best organised animal to the roughest mineral.
— Georges Leclerc (Comte de) Buffon (1707 – 1788), quoted by Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (1973).

… all the work of the crystallographers serves only to demonstrate that there is only variety everywhere where they suppose uniformity, that in nature there is nothing absolute, nothing perfectly regular.
— Georges Leclerc (Comte de) Buffon (1707 – 1788), Natural History of Minerals, 1783-1788.

Just as physics and chemistry discover the mineral components of compound bodies by experimental investigation, so to comprehend the phenomena of life that are so complex, it is necessary to go deep into the organism and to analyse the organs and tissues in order to reach the organic components.
— Claude Bernard (1813 – 1878), quoted by Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (1973).

The emission of light from within a substance while it is being exposed to direct radiation, or in certain cases to an electrical discharge in a vacuum tube, is called fluorescence. It is best exhibited by fluorite, from which the phenomenon gained its name… The electrical charge from the negative pole of a vacuum tube calls out a brilliant fluorescence not only with the diamond, the ruby, and many gems, but also with calcite and other minerals. Such substances may continue to emit light, or phosphoresce, after the discharge ceases.
— Edward S. Dana, Dana’s Textbook of Mineralogy, 4th edition, 275.

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