304 Professor Bischof on the 



discourse : many parts of it I have treated of very slightly ; 

 some, I am sure, very imperfectly, and perhaps obscurely; your 

 knowledge and intelligence will supply many deficiencies, and 

 I am confident I may equally rely on your kindness for exer- 

 cising them, recollecting (be pleased to do so) that my main 

 object has not been so much to impart minute information, 

 as to inculcate some general principles, and to endeavour to 

 excite inquiry, that methodical and scientific inquiry which 

 leads to exact knowledge, and to the perfecting of. when di- 

 ligently carried out, every art to which it is applied. 



On the Foundation of a New Geology. By Professor G^ 

 Bischof of Bonn. 



" For a number of years," says Professor Bischof, " I have 

 contemplated the publication of a geology based on chemical 

 and physical principles. With this view, I have made ob- 

 servations during journeys, principally in the neighbourhood 

 of my own residence, which is so interesting in a geological 

 point of view, and I have carried on experiments in my la- 

 boratory, in order to study nature in her formations and 

 changes. It will readily be admitted that it was necessary 

 to examine geology in a chemical and physical point of view ; 

 for our geologists, for the most part, are neither chemists, 

 nor natural philosophers ; and to endeavour to explain, with- 

 out chemical or physical knowledge, the chemical operations- 

 which have taken place in the great laboratory of nature^ 

 appears to me a vain attempt. Werner wished to explain all 

 by the Neptunian theory, at a time when chemistry had 

 scarcely done anything for geology. His system is exploded. 

 It has been succeeded by Huttonianism, which has likewise 

 been pushed too far, and has done more injury in its turn than 

 all the Wernerians. I shall shew that it is altogether a vain 

 attempt to endeavour to explain all by either of these two 

 methods. 



In the present state of science, we cannot doubt that the 

 crystalline rocks owe their origin to an igneous fusion. But 

 we no longer meet with granite, basalt, diorite, &c., in their 



