Dana's new mineralogy; The system of mineralogy of James Dwight Dana

Description

Just as the first edition of Dana’s A System of Mineralogy, this eighth edition also attempts to describe, catalog, and classify all known and recognized minerals reported in the literature up to December 31, 1995. It is the most ambitious effort to catalog minerals to date with a gigantic list of contributors and prior editors. The definition of a mineral as used in this work is a pragmatic, functional one. “A mineral is an element or chemical compound that is normally crystalline and that has been formed as a result of geological processes” It includes over 2000 minerals and includes (1) the name and its significance; (2) geographic and geologic occurrence, source or generation of the mineral, and associated minerals, particularly those in apparent equilibrium with the proposed new mineral; (3) composition and method of analysis; (4) chemical formula, empirical and simplified; (5) crystallographic data, including single crystal and powder diffraction results, the morphology, and crystal structure determination; (6) general appearance and physical properties; (7) the optical properties; (8) locality of the type material; and (9) relationship to other species. It belongs on the desk of every geologist and mineralogist but is unusually hard to find.