iMK'Hlei.W ACADKMV OK 8C1KNCK. 9H 



left us in his "Prodromus" one of the great scientific legacies of his 

 age, now accessible to all through the excellent translation from the 

 Latin by Professor Winter. 



Inductive methods of reasoning came to play a larger part in the con- 

 struction of theories as the control by both branches of the Christian 

 church began to be relaxed. The feeling of relief from restraint brought, 

 however, a reaction in what was almost an epidemic of theories charac- 

 terized by a carelessness of construction and an insecurity of foundation 

 that were surpassed only by the ardor and the vindictiveness with which 

 they were defended. The latter half of the eighteenth and the first 

 part of the nineteenth centuries was thus a period characterized by 

 notable controversies in science which afi'ected the greater part of Europe. 

 Theories were attacked or defended with almost fanatical bitterness, 

 the aim of the advocates of each theory being a^jparently less to arrive 

 at the truth than to win in the struggle. Geologists were divided into 

 two hostile camps over the origin of basalt ; the Neptunists led by the 

 Freiberg school of Werner in Germany claiming that it was a chemical 

 precipitate in the ocean, and the Vulcanists who followed James Hutton 

 of Edinburgh and believed the rock to be a product of the earth's in- 

 ternal heat. National boundaries were largely broken down and some 

 of the most pertinacious and vindictive of the Wernerians were to be 

 found in the British Isles. 



On the other hand, the Neptunists had to meet in Germany a formid- 

 able champion of vulcanism in the poet Goethe, who, like Dante five 

 centuries earlier, had a keen interest in science. For a time the bone 

 of contention was found in a small hill near Eger in Bohemia, known 

 as the Kammerbtihl, a hill which Goethe stoutly maintained was "a 

 pocket edition of a volcano." He suggested a simple method by which 

 the question might be settled, and proposed that a tunnel should be 

 driven into the hill to its center. If the mountain was a volcano, as he 

 believed, a plug of basalt should be found occupying its axis. A wealthy 

 friend, Count Casper von Sternberg, undertook extensive excavations, 

 which when completed in 1837 abimdantly proved the correctness of the 

 poet's position. 



Another great controversy was waged over the theory of the German 

 geologist von Buch, known as the "Elevation Crater Theory," which 

 assumed that volcanoes were pushed up in much the same manner as 

 is the cuticle in the formation of a blister upon the body. Like the theory 

 of the Neptunists, this doctrine was overthrown as soon as inductive 

 methods of examination were applied to it. 



Two doctrines of geology which were destined lo play a large r61e 

 in the history of science were developed in France. The "pentagonal 



