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International agreement in mineralogical and crystallographical nomenclature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

L. J. Spencer
L. J. Spencer*
Affiliation:
Mineral Department of the British Museum (Natural History)
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Extract

A Committee on Nomenclature and Classification of Minerals was appointed at the first annual meeting of the Mineralogical Society of America in December 1920, and two of its reports have been recently issued in the ‘American Mineralogist’. Such a committee for standardizing nomenclature is clearly needed, but it must take a far wider view. If the recommendations can be, or are likely to be, adopted only in their country of origin then the result will be still further confusion in the nomenclature of the science. It is especially important in this connexion to bear in mind that science is world-wide, and its language should, as far as possible, be adapted to meet international needs. The tendency to adapt names to particular languages should rather be discouraged.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical magazine and journal of the Mineralogical Society , Volume 20 , Issue 109 , June 1925 , pp. 353 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1925

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References

Page 353 note 1 This paper was also read on August 8, 1924, before Section C (Geology) at the Toronto meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Title only is published in the Report. I further had the advantag of discussing it informally with several American mineralogists, more particularly at the Geophysical Laboratory in Washington.

Page 353 note 2 Amer. Min., 1923, vol. 8, p. 51 ; 1924, vol. 9, p. 61.

Page 353 note 3 Strict adherence to priority would give rise to many difficulties. For example, the now well-known name Calcite was first applied (in 1886) to the ‘barley-corn’ pseudomorphs of Calcium carbonate after celestine from Sangerhausen in Thuringia ; and only later (in 1848) was it limited to the species then known as Calc-spar, Calcareous spar, or Iceland-spar.

Page 357 note 1 Zeits. Kryst. Min., 1906, vol. 51, p. 184 ; Min. Mag., 1907, vol. 14, p. 394.

Page 357 note 2 Journ. Chem. Soc. London, 1910, vol. 98, Abstr. ii, p. 187.

Page 357 note 3 An excellent conspectus of mineralogical nomenclature was given by J. D. Dana in the introduction to the fifth edition (1868) of his ‘System of Mineralogy’ ; and in that edition many names were for the first time provided with the termination -ire. For example, Analcite, Nephelite, Pyrrhotite, Chalcocite; but of these the older forms, Analcime, Nepheline, Pyrrhotine, Chalcosine, still stand in all European languages. Dana also attempted to establish a distinction between mineral names and rock names by the use of the terminations -ire and -yte respectively. Tim latter has found little or no acceptance.