30 THE COMING [CH. 



set so strongly in favour of Wernerism and Neptunism, 

 and the Catastrophic doctrines which all thought to 

 be necessary conclusions from them. The great 

 heroic workers of that day while they were laying 

 well and truly the foundations of historical geology 

 were, one and all, indifferent to, or violently opposed 

 to, the Huttonian teaching. Neither Fitton nor John 

 Phillips, who at a later date showed sympathy with 

 evolutionary doctrines, were the men to fight the 

 battle of an unpopular cause. 



Attempts have been made by both Playfair and 

 Fitton to explain how it was that Button's teaching 

 failed to arrest the attention it deserved. The former 

 justly asserted that the world was tired of the per- 

 formances issued under the title of * theories of the 

 earth'; and that the condensed nature of Button's 

 writings, with their * embarrassment of reasoning and 

 obscurity of style 25 ' are largely responsible for the 

 neglect into which they fell 



Fitton, in 1839, wrote in the Edinburgh Review, 

 ( The original work of Hutton (in two volumes) is in 

 fact so scarce that no very great number of our 

 readers can have seen it. No copy exists at present 

 in the libraries of the Royal Society, the Linnean, 

 or even the Geological Society of London 26 ! ' He 

 also points out that Button's work, and even the 

 more lucid Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, 



