2 DE. THOMAS STEREY HUNT ON THE 



Pallas held a similar view, and according to Daubrée, both Pallas and Saussure 

 " admitted, as Linnaeus had done, that all the ten-anes have been formed by the agency of 

 water, and that volcanic phenomena are but local accidents." Pallas pixblished his 

 " Observations on Mountains" in 1111, and Saussure the first volume of his " Voyages 

 dans les Alpes" in 11*79. It was about 1*780 that the celebrated professor of Freiberg 

 began, in his lectures, the exposition of his views, called by Playfair " the neptunian system 

 as improved by Werner;" though his Classification of the "Rocks, in which these views were 

 finally embodied, dates only from 1*78*7. 



§ 3. According to Werner, the materials which now form the solid crust of the 

 globe were deposited from the waters of a primeval ocean, in which the elements of 

 the crystalline rocks were at one time dissolved, and from which they were separated 

 as chemical precipitates. The granite, which he regarded as the fundamental rock, was 

 first laid down, and was closely followed by the gneisses and the horublendic and micaceous 

 schists, "When the dissolving ocean covered the whole globe to a great depth, and its 

 waters were tranquil and pure, the rocks deposited were exclusively crystalline and, like 

 the ocean, they were universal. These he distinguished as the Primitive rocks. 



At a later period, the depth of the ocean was supposed to have been diminished by the 

 retreat of a portion of the waters to cavities within the globe ; a notion apparently 

 borrowed from Leibnitz, who imagined caverns, left by the cooling of a formerly fused 

 mass, to have stibsequently served as reservoirs for a part of the universal ocean. In this 

 second period, according to Werner, a chemical deposition of silicates still went on, but 

 dry land having been exposed and shallows formed, currents destroyed portions of the 

 previously deposited masses, which were also attacked by atmospheric agents. By these 

 actions were formed mechanical sediments, which became interstratified with those of 

 chemical origin. It was during this period of co-incident chemical and mechanical 

 deposition that were formed the Intermediate or Transition rocks of Werner, which, from 

 the conditions of their formation, necessarily covered only portions of the universal 

 Primitive series. At a still later period, marked by a farther diminution of the superficial 

 waters, were laid down the Secondary rocks of Werner, at a time when the sea no lon"-er 

 produced mineral silicates, and had assumed essentially its present composition. 



§ 4. The Primitive rocks, according to this hypothesis, were those composed entirely 

 of chemical deposits, which are either crystallized or have a tendency to crystallization, 

 and in which the action of mechanical causes cannot be traced. In the Transition series, 

 the products of chemical and mechanical processes are intermingled, and materials derived 

 from the disintegration and decay of Primitive rocks are present ; while the rocks of 

 the Secondary series were formed from the ruins alike of the Primitive and the Transition 

 series. During the process of their consolidation, the various strata having been broken, 

 fissures were formed through which the surplus waters retired to the internal cavities, 

 depositing on the walls of the fissures through which they descended, the various matters 

 still held in solution. In this way were formed metalliferous and other mineral veins. 



The aqueous solution in which all these crystalline rocks were at first dissolved was 

 described by Werner and his disciples as a chaotic liquid, and he even designated the 

 rocks themselves as chaotic, " because they were formed when the earth's surface was a 

 chaos." These Primitive rocks, consisting of the granite and the overlying crystal- 

 line schists, covered the whole earth, and their geographical inequalities were due to 



