Download or read book Lecture Notes on General and Special Mineralogy (Classic Reprint) written by Frank R. van Horn and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Lecture Notes on General and Special Mineralogy Whatever their nature, they are generally of microscopic size; Thus we often find needles of Rutile and Tourmaline in Quartz. Magnetite in Muscovite Mica; Asbestos or Amphibole and Pyrite in Quartz and Calcite. We also find small cavities filled with water, solutions of salts, hydrocarbon compounds, and liquid or gaseous carbon dioxide. The Quartz crystals in 9. Granite at Branchville, Conn., contain so much liquid carbon dioxide that they are said to explode with considerable noise when broken. Many Topazes also contain the same substance. It is also quite com mon to find glassy inclusions in the minerals found in some lavas, as Leucite in some of the Italian rocks. The use of the microscope in the examination of thin sect-ions of rocks has shown how com mon all these different kinds of inclusions are. Minerals, then, have their homogeneity locally disturbed by all such inclusions as have been mentioned; but if we consider the mineral apart from the inclusion, it is homogeneous. Theoretically it is possible to separate these inclusions from the parent mineral, but practically, on account of the microscopic fineness to which they are sometimes reduced, the feat is often impossible. However, we may disregard such slight disturbances of homogeneity and consider the sub stance as a mineral, though in reality it is a mineral aggregate. If we use the word mineral in the most exclusive maxmer, then all inorganic secretions and concretions which have been made by animals or vegetables are not to be classed as minerals. Examples of such substances of animal origin would be corals, shells, and bones; while coal, amber, and infusorial earth represent the vego table kingdom. Neither are artificial inorganic substances made by man in his laboratory to be considered as minerals; so that all these facts show us that there are many inorganic substances which do not come within the province of Mineralogy, which is a branch of Inorganography, if I may coin a word which is used in other languages but not in English, which therefore is a more com prehensive subject than Mineralogy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.