This catalogue was commenced in the year 1867 for use in arranging the collections of the School of Mines of Columbia College. After abandoning the project, the general concept of a of a mineral synonym catalogue was recommenced and improved to serve the needs of the National Museum. A number of source materials were consulted to acquire the information to compile this catalogue, although because of the scope of the work some errors may exist in this collection of synonyms, and some published synonyms may have been missed or overlooked.

Excerpt from A Catalogue of Minerals and Synonyms This catalogue was commenced in the year 1867 for use in arranging the collections of the School of Mines of Columbia College, but after many months' labor, when the work was nearly completed up to that date, it was abandoned on account Of the press of other duties. The collections have since that time increased to such an extent that the necessity of a Museum catalogue has impressed itself upon me many times, but other duties prevented my taking it up. In the last year, however, having occasion to make some investigations and finding it almost impossible to get at the different synonyms of the various min erals on account of the imperfections of the indices of the various works, the work was taken up again and finished. It was found that the progress of the science since 1867 had been so great that the work previously done had to be altogether abandoned, so that all that is left of it is the general plan. It is hardly to be hoped that this catalogue is without errors, or that every name which has been published has been found. There are, however, several thousand more names contained in it than in any other published index. 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.