184 Memoir of Alraham Gottlob Werner, 
tinate, but for that reason the more honourable contest with the 
voleanists. Now, no well-informed person will consider the ba- 
salt and other fleetz mountains as of volcanic origin. Werner’s 
theory of the older and newer formation of mountains, by the 
waters, stands immoveable; and a satisfactory link between them 
is afforded in the mountains of the interval of transition. Even 
the new chemical discoveries of the kalimetals may be made to 
accord with it. Another science, Mining, on which Werner used 
also to lecture, was rendered extremely clear to the attentive 
scholar, by his luminous explanation and by the reduction of the 
most complicated machinery to the most simple propositions, at 
the same time drawing all the figures on his table. Indefatigable 
application, insatiable thirst of knowledge, enriched his retentive 
memory with every thing that history and philology, in the most 
extensive sense, can offer to the attentive inquirer. No science 
was foreign to him. All served as a basis to his studies, which 
were constantly directed to natural philosophy, and the know- 
ledge of the earth and its inhabitants. He always advanced be- 
fore his age, and often knew what others only presumed. After 
1779 and 1780, when he first lectured on oryktognosis and 
geognosis, at Frieberg, he was heard with gratitude by scholars 
from all parts of Europe. Never contented with what was dis- 
covered, always seeking something new, he rather formed 
scholars who wrote than wrote himself. But many MSS, almost 
wholly ready for the press are included in his fine library, collec- 
tion of coins and MSS. bequeathed on the day of his death to 
the Mineralogical Academy, for 5000 crowns. In his lectures 
he had only heads of the subject before him. In lecturing he 
used to abandon himself, as he was accustomed to say, to the 
inspiration of his mineralogical muse; and when his spirit ho- 
vered over the waters and the strata, he often became animated 
with lofty enthusiasm. But he caused his lectures to be written 
out by approved scholars; and by revising himself what they had 
thus written after him, made it, properly speaking, a MS. A 
great many parts of his lectures have been made public by others, 
among which may be reckoned what Andic, at Brunn in Mo- 
ravia, has published in the valuable journal Hesperus. But no- 
thing bears the confirmation of the seal of the master. What is’ 
particularly desirable is the publication of his manuscript on 
Mineralogical Geography (which he only once drew up for a 
particular lecture), and upon the Literature of Mineralogy, in 
which he solved the difficulties of the ancient classic mineralogy, 
and gave incomparable illustrations of, Pliny’s Natural History. 
He was like a father to all his scholars, to whom he was a mo- 
del not only as a man of science, but as a moral character. 
Having filled, from the year 1792, a high situation in pias 
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