272 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



<^eolo<fV :ni(l to substitute liis own word "geognosy"" for it, a word 

 intended by liiin to separate the knowable from the unknown. 



Probably there wouUl liave been less controversy between Nep- 

 tunists and Phitonists had Werner conunitted more of his work 

 to writing, and not left us de])endent on his pupils for their Aer- 

 «ions of his views. But it is a curious fact, and one probably not 

 dissociated from a geologist's devotion to field study, that many of 

 those who have made great advances have either disliked the act of 

 writing or have been unfortunate in the style of their written work. 

 It Avill be sufficient to couple with Werner in this respect such names 

 as AVilliam Smith, Sedgwick, and even Hutton, not to mention those 

 of more recent geologists. It has not been from Smith alone that 

 views and conclusions have had to be extracted almost by force 

 and committed to writing by faithful devotees. 



Yet, after all, this failing has not been without its advantages. 

 The joy of such men is in discovery, and they are happy and con- 

 tented when, but only when, they feel perfect confidence in their 

 conclusions. If their results then get published it is with an author- 

 ity and finality denied to lesser men. In the progress of their work 

 they are apt, as in fact all of them did, to infect their friends and 

 students with the enthusiasm that only the spoken word can arouse. 

 And to others they have always been most generous, even lavish, in 

 giving ideas and momentum, partly out of sheer good nature, but 

 much more through the desire to watch the germination of the good 

 seed that they sow broadcast and to see the harvest reaped, not by or 

 for themselves but for the advantage of the science whose welfare is 

 their chief care. 



During the early grow^th of the science, as in human families, it 

 was the influence of the other parent that was most felt. From 

 the earliest thinkers of Greece and Rome we have record of number- 

 less observations and discoveries, sometimes in respect of minerals 

 or organic fossils, sometimes of unusual phenomena in mountains 

 or volcanoes or in the relations of sea and land, generally leading 

 to reasoned conclusions, many of them perhaps fanciful, some even 

 absurd, but others so sound and far-seeing that they have not been 

 upset at the present day. Many other countries, joining the favored 

 ones along the Mediterranean, carried the torch forward, and in 

 spite of the clogging influence of the vested intellectual interests of 

 the day, the stock of Imowledge gradually grew, until we find that 

 Ijconardo da Vinci was able to make as great an advance in the 

 knowledge of the earth as he did in his own arts of painting, sculp- 

 ture, and architecture. 



It is true that during this period observers had a tendency to 

 confine themselves too exclusively to one or other side of their sub- 



