2 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



tunism. This distinguished man lived until 1817 without relinquish- 

 ing or modifying in the slightest degree his conception of the earth's 

 crust. The great exponent of vulcanism, James Hutton, betrays also 

 a lingering remnant of the old point of view in the very title of his 

 famous work, "Theory of the Earth," which appeared in 1785 and was 

 followed in 1802 by the elegant "Illustrations of the Huttonian 

 Theory" from the pen of his friend and admirer, Playfair. 



Another significant feature of the Heroic Age was the recognition 

 of the necessity for wider observation, which was strikingly illustrated 

 by the lives of the great geological travellers, Pallas (1741-1811) and 

 von Humboldt (1769-1859), and by the pioneer alpinist, de Saussure 

 (1740-1799). 



Notwithstanding the able work of Hutton and his adherents 

 this famous thirty years of regeneration was distinctly Wernerian 

 as indicated by the text-books of the time — Reuss, Leipzig, 1800- 

 1806; Jameson, Edinburgh, 1808; De Bonnard and De Voisins, France, 

 1819. 



In North America, geology had its origin during the Heroic 

 Age. It is significant that Merrill selects an almost synchronous 

 time, 1775-1819, as the first period of American geology, to which 

 he gives the name "Maclurean Era." This era opens with the new 

 light breaking but obscured by the clouds of the vulcanist-neptunist 

 controversy. It was essentially Wernerian. Maclure's famous map 

 was published in 1809 and the second edition of his "Observations" 

 in 1817, both purely Wernerian. It would seem that no publication 

 dealing with Canadian geology appeared during this period, i.e., up 

 to 1820. 



Period 1820-1840 



The two decades, 1820-1840, constitute the "University Period" 

 in the development of our subject: it is given a recognized position in 

 the great universities of Europe: it is at last a "science." Consequent 

 upon this recognition came subdivision and specialization: the general 

 geologist, even at this early time, began to give way to the specialist. 

 Cosmic, dynamic, stratigraphie, and other phases of geology received 

 independent positions, and palaeontology rose to the rank of a 

 distinct science. The term, palaeontology, was proposed in 1834 by 

 two independent workers, De Blainville and Fischer von Waldheim. 



Early in this period the importance of stratigraphy and the 

 value of fossils in chronology is emphasized in "The Geology of 

 England and Wales" by Conybeare and Phillips. It is to be noted, 

 however, that the old ideas died hard, for Bakewell's "Introduction 



