MEMOIR OF LEOPOLD VOX BUCII. oOiJ 



After a preliminary course of instruction, tlic young Leopold Von Bucli, born 

 April 26, 1774, quitted the banks of the Oder in order to enter, at scarcely 

 sixteen years of age, upon new and more severe studies. The school of mines. 

 a first step to geology, was that in which his aptitude and energy received thfii- 

 earliest development. 



Few sciences are at once so recent and so old as geology. In every age men 

 have sought to know hoAv the globe they inhabit was formed, and the problem 

 has always proved highly embarrassing. Hence certain ancient philosophers 

 were led to solve the difficulty by the very convenient supposition that the 

 world is eternal. Fortunately, a Avriter much older than these philosophers, 

 and, without himself suspecting it, much more learned, has transmitted to us a 

 singularly fiiithful indication of the manner in which things had their beginning, 

 and of the stages by which they have arrived at the state in Avhich we now see 

 them. The record of Moses had become, at the end of the XVIIth century, the 

 theme which exercised all intellects. Stenon, Burnet, Woodward, Whiston,* 

 applied themselves to the study of the deluge described in Genesis, and thought 

 that all the changes of the globe might be explained by the effects of that 

 deluge alone. Liebnitzt was the first to comprehend that previous to the 

 action of the waters, a still more energetic action, that of lire, must have been 

 exerted; for all has been melted, all has been liquefied. "And Avhat other 

 agent," he cries, "what other agent but fire could have been capable of dissolv- 

 ing those mighty bones of the globe, those naked rocks and imperishable 

 boulders: magna telluris ossa, midaque illce rtipes atque immortaJcs siUces! " 



To Leibnitz succeeded Buffon. In his Theory of the eafth, Buffon, as yet. 

 saw nothing but the action of water; in his system on the Formatian of tin 

 planets, he sees nothing but the action of fire; in his EpocJis of nature, his best 

 considered and most perfect woi'k,| he skilfully subordinates the action of 

 water to that of fire, assigns to each of these agents its part, to every event its 

 place, to every fact its age; but this admirable book came too late. From tlu' 

 appearance of the two earlier productions of Buffon, his cotemporaries had 

 been divided; some had taken sides for his theory, some for his system. The 

 first imagined everything to have been formed by water, the last by fire; these 

 were called Vulcanians, those Neptunians. In England the Vulcanian;- 

 acknowledged as their chiefs Hutton and Playfair,§ in France Desmarets and 

 Dolomieu.|| The school of Freyberg, where Germany flocked around Werner,^[ 

 became the centre of neptu7usm. It was here that the young Yon Buch 

 arrived in 1791. 



Confided to the care of Werner, he was his favorite disciple, and an inmate 

 of bis house. In long and paternal colloquies, the master, who united with the 



* Stenon: Nlcolai Stenonis de solido intra solidum nutiiraliter contento dissertationis 

 Prodromus. Florentia, IGGO. 



Burnet: Telluris thcoria sacra, etc. Londini, 168L 



Woodward: An essay taicards the natural history of the earth, etc. London, 1695. 



Whiston: A ncio theory of the earth. London, 1708. 



t Leibnitz: Protogcc.a, site de prima facie telluris, etc. (Actes de Lcipsick,) 1683 



t Further developments on this point may be seen in the author's Histoirc des travaux et 

 des idecs de Buffon. 



§ Hutton, (James,) born 1726, died 1797: Theory of the earth, with proofs and illustrations, 

 in four parts. Edinburgh, 1795. This work is a reproduction of two former Essays or Me- 

 moirs, published, the first iu 1785, the second in 1788. 



Playt'air, John: Illustrations of the Huttonian theory of the earth. Edinburg, 1802. 



II Desmarets, (Nicolas, ) born 1725, died 1815, was the first who, iu France, conceived the 

 system of vidcanism. 



Dolomieu, (Deodat-Guy-Sylvain-Tancrede de Gratet de,) bom 1750, died 1801, was tlic 

 {geologist w ho, before Von Buch, most advanced the theory of volcanoes and that of the 

 action of fire on the globe. 



IT Abraham-Gottlob Werner, born 1750, died 1817, influenced more than any other man of 

 his time the progress of geology. 



