ON THE FORMATION OF CRYSTALLINE ROCKS. 237 



rowed directly from the school of Freyberg. In France, Dolomieu. 

 Girand-Soulavie, Faujas-Saint-Fond, who since the end of the last 

 century earnestly combatted the hypothesis of Werner on the aqueous 

 origin of basalt, and d' Aubuisson, whom the study of Auvergne obliged 

 a little later to adopt an opinion opposed to that of his master, gave 

 but little attention to ideas towards which it would seem they ought 

 to have felt themselves strongly attracted. Cuvier, in the report on 

 the progress of natural science since 1789, which was published in 

 1808, only cites Hutton to speak Avith great doubt of the opinion of 

 this savant on the intervention of heat in the origin of basalt.* 

 "How," asks Cuvier, "are we to resolve the problems of the his- 

 tory of the globe with the forces of nature which we know to be at 

 present in existence ?"t 



It is, in reality, only since 1815, after the relations of Great Britain 

 with the continent were renewed, that the labors of Hutton and his 

 disciples began to be known to the rest of Europe; it was then only 

 that there appeared in Paris a translation of the works of Playfair, 

 which had been published thirteen years before in Edinburg, 



A few years after, Dr. Boue, :]: who had studied geology in the 

 Scotch capital, and who had explored Scotland, contributed to propa- 

 gate these ideas. Moreover, establishing himself on the modifications 

 observed in the neighborhood of the plutonic rocks of the Isle of Sky, 

 at Monzoni and elsewhere, he put forth the idea that gneiss and other 

 crystalline rocks contiguous to the granite are only sedimentary strata 

 transformed by ancient eruptions of that rock. Doubtless this was 

 greatly to exaggerate the extent and power of the phenomenon; cer- 

 tain geologists, however, have retained this theory to the present 

 time. II After having visited Scotland, Mr. Necker also became an in- 

 terpreter of the principal views of Hutton. § 



Sir Charles Lyell did his part, by elegantly written works, to make 

 known the Scotch doctrine. As early as 1825 he summed up, under 



-Edition in 8vo, p. 171-2, 



t Report before cited, p. 180. This last phrase iy a criticism of the other principle which 

 Hutton tried to establish, that ancient plienomeua appeared to be due to the action of 

 actual causes suhicieutly prolonged. 



•'This progression is too slow to be immediately perceived by man ; the most remote 

 fact that experience can furnish ought to be considered as the momentary increment of an 

 immense progression, which has no other limits than the duration of the world. Time 

 takes upon itself the function of integrating the parts of which this progression is com- 

 posed." — Plajifair. Dolomieu was entirely opposed to this opinion. 



"It is not time, but force that I invoke. Nature demands of time the means of repair- 

 ing disorder, but it receives from motion the power of overthrowing." — (Journal de 

 Phijsique, vol. ii, 1792.) 



I Tableau de I'Allemagne, Journal de Physique, 1822, Memoire Geologique sur le sud-ouest 

 de la France. {^Annales des Sciences Nut UTcUes, vol. ii, p. 387, 182i,) Mr. Boue tried to 

 show the eruptive origin of granite, of porphyry, and of grunstein in the different parts of 

 Germany. He based his piincipal conclusion on the excellent observations of Palassou in 

 the Pyrenees. The beds of iron in the environs of Vicdessos appeared to him to have been 

 formed by sublimation. 



I Thus, according to Leopold de Buch, all the gneiss of Finland is only the result of the 

 tranformation of argillaceous schists, under the action of substances which were disengaged 

 at the time of the upheaval of the granite ; this is, he adds, the opinion adopted l)y all 

 geologists. — { Ueher graiiite und gneiss. Abha)idlungeii der Akadamie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 

 p. 63, 1842.) 



§ Voyage en Ecosse el ouj: iles Ethndes, 1821. 



