5S4 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



source of information. But the interpretations of the account of the 

 oreation have gone further beyond the limits of sound philosophy : and 

 when we look at the arbitrary and fantastical inventions by which a 

 few phrases of the writings of Moses have been moulded into complete 

 systems, we cannot doubt that these interpretations belong to the pre- 

 sent Section. 



I shall not attempt to criticize, nor even to enumerate, these Scrip- 

 tural Geologies, Sacred Theories of the Earth, as Burnet termed his. 

 Ray, Woodward, Whiston, and many other persons to whom science 

 has considerable obligations, were involved, by the speculative habits 

 of their times, in these essays ; and they have been resumed by per- 

 sons of considerable talent and some knowledge, on various occasions 

 up to the present day ; but the more geology has been studied on its 

 own proper evidence, the more have geologists seen the unprofitable 

 character of such labors. 



I proceed now to the next step in the progress of Theoretical Geo- 

 logy. 



Sect. 3. Of Premature Geological Theories. 



WHILE we were giving our account of Descriptive Geology, the atten- 

 tive reader would perceive that we did, in fact, state several steps in 

 the advance towards general knowledge ; but when, in those cases, the 

 theoretical aspect of such discoveries softened into an appearance of 

 mere classification, the occurrence was assigned to the history of 

 Descriptive rather than of Theoretical Geology. Of such a kind was 

 the establishment, by a long and vehement controversy, of the fact, that 

 the impressions in rocks are really the traces of ancient living things ; 

 such, again, were the division of rocks into Primitive, Secondary, Ter- 

 tiary ; the ascertainment of the orderly succession of organic remains ; 

 the consequent fixation of a standard series of formations and strata ; 

 the establishment of the igneous nature of trap rocks ; and the like. 

 These are geological truths which are assumed and implied in the very 

 language which geology uses ; thus showing how in this, as in all 

 other sciences, the succeeding steps involve the preceding. But in the 

 history of geological theory, we have to consider the wider attempts 

 to combine the facts, arid to assign them to their causes. 



The close of the last century produced two antagonist theories of 

 this kind, which long maintained a fierce and doubtful struggle ; that 

 of Werner and that of Hutton : the one termed Neptunian, from its 



