460 Analyses of Booh. [Dec. 



render it safe for him to draw general inferences from the order 

 of position which he there observed. It may be true that he 

 was not verv successful in his attempts to ascertain the order of 

 the rocks of which these countries are composed— all this and 

 more may be true, and yet Werner may have been fortunate 

 enough to hit upon a fundamental geological fact upon the pro- 

 secution of which the future progress of the science may in a 

 great measure depend. 



As far as it is possible to judge of Werner from the few 

 writings which he has left us, his powers of arrangement seem 

 to have been rather deficient, and he displays a want of taste 

 and a minuteness in his subdivisions which render it peculiarly 

 disagreeable to peruse his writings. He probably possessed that 

 enthusiasm for his profession, and that peculiar kind of 

 eloquence, which captivates young minds ; for his reputation was 

 chiefly owing to the panegyrics of his scholars, almost all of 

 whom viewed him with a mixture of love and admiration. In 

 his geological speculations, he attempted more than it was 

 possible for one man to accomplish. Hence his inferences are 

 frequently such as must be relinquished when we judge of them 

 by a comparison of the structure of different countries with his 

 geognosy. At the same time it is but fair to remark, that 

 Werner never published any thing on the subject of geognosy, 

 that his opinions were merely stated in his lectures, and after- 

 wards given to the world by his pupils from what they recollected 

 of the peculiar opinions of their master. Now every Professor 

 who has had an opportunity of looking at the notes of his 

 lectures taken by his students must be aware how extremely apt 

 they are to misrepresent his meaning, or even to ascribe to him 

 sentiments different from those which he really entertains. I 

 think I can perceive traces of this misrepresentation in the 

 Wernerian geognosy, as retailed to us by the most distinguished 

 of Wemer's'pupils. For example, there is a mountain of a very 

 remarkable character which occurs in the primitive country of 

 Saxony, to which the name of topaz rock was given, because it 

 contained that beautiful stone. It was natural for Werner to call 

 the attention of his students to this remarkable rock. This he 

 did by placing it provisionally among the primitive formations, 

 not, I am persuaded, as a thing already established, but as a 

 doubtful point to be decided by future and more extensive 

 observations. Those pupils who published the outline of the 

 Wernerian geognosy omitted the mark of hesitation with which 

 Werner probably spoke of this rock, and reckoned it among the 

 established general primitive formations. Thus they introduced 

 an absurdity into the science of which Werner was, in all proba- 

 bility, not guilty; and such is the veneration with which the 

 Wernerians are in the habit of viewing the statements of their 

 master that no writer among them (at least so far as I know) 

 has ventured to strike out the topaz rock from the list of general 



