170 Analysis of Scientific Books. 



Jameson of Edinburgh has given of certain districts of Scot- 

 land, and of some of the Hebridian isles, having never been 

 translated into French, is hardly known in the countries where 

 this language is spoken. Even did they know it, 1 may ven- 

 ture to assert, without pretending to take from the merit of 

 the many valuable observations with which the works of this 

 learned mineralogist are replete, that a too scrupulous attach- 

 ment to the doctrine of his illustrious master, Werner, 

 has injured the accuracy of some of his observations. He 

 has even neglected sometimes to state facts which, by their 

 consequences in reference to geological methods, deserved to be 

 examined with the greatest care ; facts which characterize the 

 mineralogical region of Scotland, but which have been some- 

 what too lightly omitted by the learned disciple of the Frey- 

 berg geologist, because they exhibited a manifest opposition to 

 certain points of the system of Werner. It was to the study of 

 these phenomena that I most particularly devoted myself; and 

 ■without wishing to deduce theoretical conclusions, I have 

 sought to verify their existence, and ascertain the consequences 

 which result from them*." 



Nothing can be more just than his remarks on the legerde- 

 main which the fanatical Wernerians played off against the 

 followers of the Huttonian heresy. " The former availed them- 

 selves of the ascendancy which a more minute study of minerals 

 afforded, to depreciate the observations of their adversaries. 

 They denied the existence of facts which the latter had dis- 

 covered, or they tried to sink their importance. Hence it 

 happened that phenomena, important to the natural history 

 of the earth, have never been made known and appreciated as 

 they ought to have been, by geologists most capable of estimat- 

 ing their consequences. The mixture of hypothesis with obser- 

 vation, and the vagueness of nomenclature in the objects de- 

 scribed, were little fitted to command the attention of the natu- 

 ralists of our days, of those philosophers who, having adopted 

 in the study of nature a more sober march than their predeces- 

 sors, seek for precise observations rather than brilliant theories, 

 and require an exact definition of the objects that engage them. 

 Directed by a similar conviction, I sought to verify, on the con- 

 tested spots, the observations of the two schools; and without 

 embracing the volcanic doctrine of Hutton, or the Neptunian 

 system of Werner, both of which, in the still limited state of 

 our geological knowledge, appear to me equally incompetent to 

 explain the formation or the actual state of the globe, I am sa- 

 tisfied that the greater part of the facts on which Werner has 

 founded his system of geognosy are truths, general, important, 

 and which have been verified by observations repeated in dif- 



* Vol. 1. Introduction, p. iv. 



