*Our miners have been left to themselves, almost without the assistance of scientific works in the English language, and without any ‘school of mines,’ to blunder their own way into a certain degree of practical skill. The inconvenience of this want of system in a country where so much capital is expended, and often wasted, in mining adventures, has been well exposed by an eminent practical miner. – See ‘Prospectus of a School of Mines in Cornwall, by J. Taylor, 1825.’

*I observe that, in a most able and interesting article ‘the Life of Galileo,’ recently published in the ‘Library of Useful Knowledge,’ it is asserted that both Galileo’s work, and the book of Copernicus ‘Nisi corrigatur,’ were still to be seen on the forbidden list of the Index at Rome in 1828. But I was assured in the same year, by Professor Scarpellini, at Rome, that Pius VII, a pontiff distinguished for his love of science, procured in 1818 a repeal of the edicts against Galileo and the Copernican system. He assembled the Congregation, and the late cardinal Toriozzi, assessor of the Sacred Office, proposed ‘that they should wipe off this scandal from the church.’ The repeal was carried, with the dissentient voice of one Dominican only. Long before this time the Newtonian theory had been taught in the Sapienza, and all catholic universities in Europe (with the exception, I am told, of Salamanca); but it was always required of professors, in deference to the decrees of the church, to use the term hypothesis, instead of theory. They now speak of the Copernican theory.

*Werner invented a new language to express his divisions of rocks, and some of his technical terms, such as grauwacke, gneiss, and others, passed current in every country in Europe. Smith adopted for the most part English provincial terms, often of barbarous sound, such as gault, cornbrash, clunch clay, &c., and affixed them to subdivisions of the British series. Many of these still retain their place in our scientific classifications, and attest his priority of arrangement.