SIR RODERICK J. MURCHISON. 19J 



by aqueous denudation, and that out of their ruins were 

 slowly accumulated new continents, to be elevated in 

 their turn by violent convulsions. Thus there would 

 be periods of repose alternating with periods of dis- 

 turbance, one of each constituting a cycle of change. 

 He held that the flow of the rivers, the dasli of the 

 rain, the destructive action of the frost, and all the 

 other agents of changes going on at the present time, 

 were the causes of those which have taken place in 

 the earth, in all the time past of which evidence is 

 before the geologist. 



" I do not pretend," wrote Hutton, " to describe the 

 beginning of things ; I take things such as I find them 

 at present, and from these I reason with regard to that 

 which must have been." These views, adopted subse- 

 quently by Lyell and his followers, did not take into 

 account either the whence or the whither, either the 

 beginning or end of the earth. They constitute the 

 essence of what Professor Huxley terms the uniformi- 

 tarian doctrine ; and be it remarked that this section 

 of the Huttonians disbelieves in the doctrine of alternate 

 periods of repose and convulsion, which is held by 

 another section, termed by Professor Huxley the 

 catastmphic. 



On the other hand, Werner taught that the earth 

 "had been originally covered by the ocean, in which 

 the materials of the minerals were dissolved ; but < >f 

 this ocean he imagined that the various rocks were 

 precipitated in the same order in which he found those 

 of Saxony to lie. Hence, on the retirement of the 

 ocean, certain universal formations spread over the 



