Biographical Memoir of Horace Benedict de Saussurc. S2T 



But Saussure was destined to other studies ; he was to un- 

 veil deeper secrets. For him it was reserved, first of all, to cast 

 a truly observing eye over those rugged girdles v/hich surround 

 our globe, and in which the substances that compose the nu- 

 cleus of our planet disclose themselves to the naturalist ; to in- 

 vestigate in detail the nature of these substances, their order, 

 or rather the disorder, into which they have been thrown by the 

 catastrophes that have heaped them upon each other ; lastly, to 

 throw some light upon the events that have preceded the pre- 

 sent state of the world, and regarding which there was nothing, 

 before his time, but the vaguest ideas or the most extravagant 

 theories. He had, in some measure, entered upon this study 

 before the age of twenty years ; for, in 1760, following the steps 

 of some Englishmen, he had essayed to mount the glaciers of 

 Chamouny. The ideas which this attempt afforded him were 

 developed during a journey which he performed in France and 

 England in 1768, and during a second, in which he passed 

 through the whole of Italy in 177^. The naturalists with 

 whom he. had intercourse, the collections which he visited, the 

 mountainous countries which he traversed, all recalled to hi& 

 mind how fertile his own country was in facts illustrative of one 

 of the most interesting subjects that could captivate the humanr 

 mind. From this period he formed the project of invariably 

 pursuing this inquiry ; and all his journeys, all his labours, even 

 his most ingenious discoveries, bear a more or less direct refe- 

 rence to this object. 



To form a more correct estimate of the importance of Saus- 

 sure's labours in this department, it will be necessary to consider 

 the views entertained of the theory of the earth at that time. 

 The naturalists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had 

 described minerals ; they had begun to collect petrifactions, but 

 they looked upon these latter bodies merely as sportive produc- 

 tions of nature, or as remains of the deluge ; and, excepting in 

 the case of metallic veins, they were far from supposing that 

 there was any constancy in the arrangement of mineral substan- 

 ces. Descartes, without attending to what naturalists had pre- 

 viously observed, had formed his globe by incrusting a sun. 

 Burnet, Whiston, and Woodwardt, some by breaking this crust, 

 others by calling a comet into play, had endeavoured to explain 



