gems, minerals, crystals, mineral collecting, geology, mineralogy,

Essentially a textbook of mineralogy augmented by information on minerals and mineral materials useful in the arts and manufactures. The brief introduction defines the scope of mineralogy, and suggests other sources of information, among them several dozen works on mineralogy, geology, and economic mineralogy, also several periodicals. The first part of the first half is theoretical mineralogy, the second part descriptive mineralogy, while the second half of the book treats geology. Precious and ornamental gemstones are described in both the mineralogical and geological parts. The plates depict mineralogical testing and prospecting instruments, crystal forms, and the last plate, part-colored, gives a geological cross-section of Europe indicating the mountain ranges and sedimentary formations, adapted from Elie de Beaumont, and another cross-section showing all types of rocks and formations in an idealized presentation after Buckland and Webster.