J. L. LOBLEl' — THE STUDY OF GEOLOGY. 173 



opinion seemed to settle clown into the conclusion that they were 

 the result of the jS^oaohiau deluge, and to question this was to 

 expose the doubter to anathema. Indeed, the deluge was made to 

 account for all geological phenomena, and AVoodward, to whom 

 geological science owes so much, for his foundation of the Chair of 

 Geology in the University of Cambridge, and of the magniticent 

 Woodwardian Museum, which is one of the glories of that 

 University, taught that the deluge had dissolved the whole earth, 

 which had been re-formed by deposition beneath the waters of the 

 flood. In 1749, Buff on, although not crediting the deluge as the 

 cause of geological phenomena, ascribed everything to the action of 

 an universal ocean which existed before the advent of man on the 

 earth : but for maintaining that water was working as of old, and 

 producing tlie same effects as it ever did, he was required by the 

 offended theologians of his day to renounce his views. Sub- 

 sequently to the time of Buffon many philosophical observers in 

 Prance, Germany, and Italy, propounded theories to account for 

 the phenomena with which they were familiar; but the presumed 

 necessity of limiting the operations of Nature to six thousand 

 years prevented that approximation to truth which would other- 

 wise have been attained. 



Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Werner, the famous 

 Professor of Mineralogy in the University of Preyberg, in Saxony, 

 boldly declared his conviction that all rocks were the result of 

 successive precipitations from a common menstruum or chaotic fluid : 

 that granite and basalt were consolidated sediments, as well as 

 ^sandstones and clays. "Werner erred, as many of us do at the 

 present day, in generalising from limited observation. He was 

 not perfectly acquainted with the geological phenomena of his 

 immediate neighbourhood, and had never travelled, and yet he 

 taught from his very limited data what he considered were 

 the principles of the formation of the whole earth. Werner's 

 views, were, however, ardently supported by his devoted pupils, 

 and his many enthusiastic disciples, who were called Neptunists, 

 because they contended that all rocks were of marine or oceanic 

 formation. But these views were as ardently opposed by those 

 who, ascribing the formation of basalts, and intrusive rocks, 

 to the action of fire, Avere known by the name of Yulcanists. 



The battle of the Neptunists and Vulcanists had raged hotly and 

 long, when, in 1788, Hutton published his 'Theory of the Earth,' 

 in which he proclaimed the grand truth, long before taught by the 

 Greek philosophers, that we have only to seek, amongst the forces 

 and operations of Nature which are now acting, for the cause of 

 all the phenomena observable in the present structure of our globe. 

 Hutton rightly ascribed the sandstones and the clays to the de- 

 position of sediment at the bottom of seas, and the intrusive rocks, 

 the basalts, the greenstones, the porphyries, and the granites, to 

 the action of fii'e ; but in not admitting gradual subsidence of the 

 land, and in supposing alternate jjcriods of repose and general dis- 

 turbance, he fell short of the truth. 



VOL. II. — PT. v. 13 



