230 Werner according to Cuvier. 



those charming valleys, rich in the productions of living nature. 

 Philosophy and the Arts first sprang to life. It is there that 

 those minds have arisen of which the human race has most 

 reason to be proud ; whilst the vast deserts of Tartary and 

 Africa have always been inhabited by fierce and wandering 

 shepherds. And even in countries which have the same laws, 

 and the same language, a practised traveller is able, from the 

 manners of the people, from the appearance of their houses and 

 their clothes, to guess at the composition of the soil of each can- 

 ton ; in the same manner as from this composition the philoso- 

 phical mineralogist conjectures what may be their manners, 

 their degrees of comfort and of instruction. Our granite dis- 

 tricts produce, upon all the arts of life, very different effects 

 from our calcareous. The natives of the Limousin, or of Lower 

 Brittany, are not lodged, they are not fed, we might even say 

 they do not think, like those of Champagne or of Normandy. 

 Even the results of the conscription have been diflerent, and 

 different according to a fixed law in the different districts. 

 Geographical mineralogy tiius assumes a high importance, when 

 we connect it with what Werner called Economical Mineralogy, 

 or the history of the employment of minerals, for the wants of 

 man. 



The comprehensive mind of this great professor seized equally 

 all these relations, and it was with an ever new delight, that 

 his hearers listened to his exposition of so much of them as his 

 public prelections embraced. But in his private conversa- 

 tions he traced their application a great deal farther. The 

 history of nations and that of their languages, was connected, 

 in his apprehension, with that of minerals, and he never con- 

 sidered himself as departing from his principal object, when he 

 gave himself up occasionally to those other inquiries. He traced 

 the various tribes in their migrations, according to the declivities 

 and directions of countries, and he thus connected their progress 

 and their stations w^ith the structure of the globe. He connected 

 the different languages with families ; he traced each fami- 

 ly to a common source, originating always in the most elevated 

 point of a mountain-chain : from that point he considered every 

 dialect as descending, dividing itself according to the directions 

 of the vallcySj becoming soft or hard according as it became 



