📕 Originally published in 1897.PREFACE: The greatest difficulty that I have experienced as a teacher of petrology has been in recommending a text-book suitable for English students. As an attempt to meet this difficulty the following pages have been written. They are intended as a guide to the study of rocks in thin slices, and are of course assumed to be supplemented throughout by demonstrations on actual specimens. For this reason the examples are chosen, so far as possible, from British rocks. No systematic account has been given here of the crystallographic and optical properties of minerals...... this early works is a comprehensive and informative look at the subject with much of the information still useful and practical today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwor