This book is "The natural history of precious stones and of the precious metals" (1867), and not "The natural history, ancient and modern, of precious stones and gems, and of the precious metals" (1865). They share some content, but they are not the same.

These works of Nature, by their beauty and the wonderful symmetry of their primary forms, have from the very dawn of science aroused the speculations of inquiring minds, which discovered in them the special manifestation of the creative energy of some higher power.
The subtle theories framed to account for such phenomena seem to me too ingenious and too curious to be allowed to rest in the oblivion to which they have been so long consigned, and therefore, in completing the “ Introduction,” I have annexed a summary of the most important amongst them, which probably will not prove to the reader one of the least interesting of my additions. These elaborate hypotheses do not, certainly, carry conviction along with them when they come to be reduced to their real principles; nevertheless, modern science, with all its formidable array of electrical, magnetical, and polarizing instruments, test-tubes, and hydrometers, has hitherto failed to supply any answer of much more intrinsic worth when stripped of its pompous cloak of technical terms.

This is not the 1865 edition, but 1867.