72 Outlines of Geology, 



lies than the genius of the wise, it must be remembered that to 

 them we chiefly owe the practical foundations of geology. 



It would be easy to shew that the theories, or rather hypotheses, 

 of which we have now taken notice, contain the germs of those 

 speculations and inquiries which in our own days have excited so 

 much attention and controversy under the name of Plutonian and 

 Neptunian doctrines. The Neptunists affecting to trace all the 

 present appearances of the globe to the sole agency of aqueous 

 solution, disintegration, and deposition ; and the Plutonists denying 

 the exclusive operation of water, but combining its powers with 

 those of fire, and calling in the aid of both elements. 



The credit, such as it is, of the Neptunian theory, is commonly 

 given to Werner ; and if we find in it all the faults of his prede- 

 cessors, and all the erroneous reasoning of darker ages, it will, at 

 the same time be recollected, that to him belongs the principal 

 merit of pointing out the order of succession which the various 

 natural families of rocks are generally found to present, and of 

 having himself developed that order to a considerable extent with 

 a degree of accuracy which before his time was unattainable, for 

 want of proper methods of discriminating minerals and their com- 

 pounds. There is one disadvantage and difficulty attending an 

 attempt to expound Werner's doctrines, which is, that we are 

 obliged to take them at second hand, since he has not published any 

 connected view of them himself ; and moreover, the Professor and 

 his scholars have generally affected a mysterious phraseology which 

 it is very difficult to construe into common sense, or intelligible 

 terms ; and which is sometimes so harsh and uncouth as to border 

 upon the ridiculous, when, at least, we attempt to put it into an Eng- 

 lish dress. The darkness which he has thrown round his doctrines 

 seems, indeed, often as if it were expressly intended to keep them 

 from the eyes of the vulgar and uninitiated, and may be compared 

 to that mystic and symbolical language in which the alchemists 

 delighted to veil the accounts of their researches, and which after 

 all were no great things when by dint of much labour and study 

 they were deciphered and done into plain and legible language. 



