635 



WERL, OLAF. 



WERNER, ABRAHAM GOTTLOB. 



636 



Piece ' and ' The Spaniards ' are considered by far the best. One 

 volume is filled with the farces : two others with dramatic poems. 

 An early tragedy, entitled ' Sinclair's Death,' is founded on a well- 

 known incident in the annals of Norway, the destruction of a body of 

 Scottish mercenaries in Swedish pay by a treacherous attack of the 

 Norwegian peasantry. An opera entitled ' The Campbells,' and two 

 tragedies, ' The Child-Murderess ' and ' The Venetians,' are of par- 

 ticular merit. ' Creation, Man, and the Messiah,' is given in a revised 

 and corrected shape, as left by the author. Of Wergeland's prose 

 writings the most interesting are a volume of short biographies of 

 distinguished Norwegians, and a history of the formation of the 

 constitution of Kidsvold. 



WERL, OLAF. [VERELIOS, OLATJS.] 



WERNER, ABRAHAM GOTTLOB, was born on the 25th of Sep- 

 tember 1750, at Weslau on the Queiss, in Upper Lausitz. His father 

 was superintendent of a foundry at that place. He gave his son 

 minerals as playthings, and young Werner thus became acquainted, 

 says Cuvier, with their names and characters as soon as he learned the 

 letters of the alphabet. He received his early education at the school 

 of the orphan asylum at Bunzlau in Silesia, but was afterwards placed 

 ut the celebrated school of mines at Freiberg in Saxony. He soon 

 formed the resolution of entering into the mining establishment at 

 that place ; and as the regulations required a licentiate's degree in 

 law before admission, he studied jurisprudence for three years at the 

 University of Leipzig, but at the same time continued to cultivate 

 a knowledge of mineralogy. At that University he published, in 1774, 

 being then twenty-four years of age, a treatise on the external 

 characters of minerals, in which he proposed a methodical and precise 

 language to describe the sensible qualities of mineral substances. By 

 this work, consisting of a few leaves, Weruer, says Cuvier, rendered a 

 service to mineralogy analogous to that which Linnaeus had rendered 

 to botanical science by the terminology made use of in his ' Philo- 

 sophia Botanica,' and effected a revolution in the science of minera- 

 logy. He here expressed his ideas on the deficiencies existing in 

 mineralogical science, and on the means of removing them. He 

 observes that the external characters of minerals had been neglected 

 in their description; and at the same time he showed that these 

 characters were not to be applied to the systematic distribution of 

 minerals, but to determine the conception of their exterior, and to fix 

 a method of describing them ; that the external characters, previously 

 employed by mineralogists, were very indefinite, and that the perfec- 

 tion and utility of the external description of minerals depended on 

 the complete definition and arrangement of the external characters. 

 This work of Werner soon became popular in Germany, but it was 

 several years before it became more extensively known. A French 

 translation, by Picardet, appeared in 1790, and one in English, by Mr. 

 Weaver, was published in Dublin in 1805. In his native country it 

 appears to have earned Werner a reputation, for in the year following 

 its publication (1775), we find him appointed professor of mineralogy 

 in the School of Mines at Freiberg, and inspector of the mineralogical 

 cabinet at that place. He held these offices for seventeen years. 



In 1780 Werner published a translation of Cronstedt's Mineralogy, 

 with notes, and in the following year a catalogue of the private col- 

 lection of minerals of Papst d'Obain. In both these works he intro- 

 duced hia method of distribution and descriptions of minerals accord- 

 ing to hia terminology, giving the name ' Oryctognosy ' to the study, 

 while he termed the knowledge and science of the positions of minerals 

 and fossils in the crust of the globe, and the classification of rocks 

 and the inferences to be drawn as to the period and circumstances of 

 their origin, ' Geognosy.' Although in the former department Werner 

 had done great practical service, it is in connection with the latter 

 division, and his theory of geology, that his name must be always 

 associated. 



In 1787 Werner published a little work on the classification of 

 rocks, ' Kurze Klassifikation und Beschreibung der verschiedenen 

 Gebirgsarten ; ' in which he points out the mineralogical distinctions 

 of rocks, but the work contains none of Werner's theoretical views 

 respecting formations, and the classification he has given in it was 

 materially altered by him at a subsequent period. Werner now pro- 

 ceeded to teach in his lectures the doctrine of the formation of the 

 primitive and other rocks by chemical precipitation from water ; and 

 in the same year, 1787, from an examination of the Erzgebirge (or 

 Ore-Mountains), in Saxony, and the basaltic rocks of the neighbour- 

 hood, he extended the application of this doctrine to the origin of 

 trap rocks. Raspe, a German, had as far back as 1768 described the 

 basalt of Hesse as of igneous origin. To Werner's limited sphere of 

 observation, his erroneous opinions on this and other subjects may in 

 some measure be attributed. He found the basaltic rocks of Saxony 

 and of Hesse forming the summits of the hills in tabular masses, and 

 not occurring in dykes and veins, or extending downwards into the 

 valleys, and hence some of the strongest proofs by which these rocks 

 are now universally admitted to be of igneous origin were absent in 

 the phenomena which came under his actual observation. But many 

 even of the appearances in the neighbourhood of Freiberg, Werner 

 appears to have overlooked or misconstrued. Thus within a day's 

 journey of his school, the porphyry, called by him primitive, has 

 been found not only to send forth veins or dykes through strata of 

 the coal formation, but to overlie them in mass. The granite of the 



liar/, mountains, on the other hand, which be supposed to be the 

 nucleus of the chain, is now well known to traverse and breach the 

 other beds, penetrating even into the plain (as near Goslar) ; and still 

 nearer Freiberg, in the Erzgebirge, the mica-slate does not mantle 

 round the granite, as was supposed, but abuts abruptly against it. 

 (Lyell.) 



These views of Werner were soon followed by the promulgation in 

 his lectures of his Theory of Formations, which, of all that ha taught, 

 we are inclined to select as his greatest achievement in the science. 

 His ideas respecting the division of rocks into great classes we have 

 seen was not original, but he was the first to observe that " the masses 

 or strata that constitute the surface of the globe present themselves 

 in groups or assemblages, the members of which are generally associ- 

 ated wherever they occur, and are so connected as to exhibit a certain 

 unity of character." These he termed ' formations,' and taught that 

 " the exterior of the earth consists of a series of these formations laid 

 over each other in a certain determinate order." This was a most 

 startling announcement when we consider what a small portion of the 

 globe had undergone a geological examination, and that even with 

 that which bad been examined, the author of this bold theory had 

 little practical acquaintance. But if this reflection increases our 

 surprise, it must also increase our admiration for the sagacity which 

 announced from such small data a truth which, combated and resisted 

 at the time, now receives the assent of all geologists, and which 

 extended observations in all parts of the globe confirm. Ideas of 

 this magnitude are, says Cuvier, the true characteristics of genius. 



Unfortunately however but as the natural consequence of his notions 

 respecting basaltic and other rocks, now deemed of igneous origin, he 

 included the latter among his series of constant universal formations, 

 and it is almost needless to say that this part of the theory has been 

 as effectually disproved as the rest hag been confirmed. Werner 

 taught that these formations, including his primitive rocks, as well as 

 his flotz or secondary rocks, were produced by a series of precipita- 

 tions and depositions formed in succession from water, which he sup- 

 posed to have covered the globe, and, existing always more or less 

 generally, contained the different substances which have been produced 

 from them. In almost necessary connection with this hypothesis, he 

 supposed a number of successive and universal changes in the level of 

 the sea, of very great extent. 



In November 1791, Werner published his 'Theory of the Formation 

 of Veins,' which he had also taught for some years previously in his 

 lectures. In this work he contended that veins were originally open 

 fissures. He accounted for the existence of the fissures by supposing 

 mountains to have been formed in the manner above stated, namely, 

 by deposition from the sea of beds one above another, and that the 

 mass of these beds being at first wet, and possessed of little tenacity, 

 the mountain yielded to its weight, cracked, and sunk down on the 

 side where support was wanting ; and that as the waters also, which 

 assisted in giving them support, began to lower their level, the mass 

 would more readily yield to its weight, and would fall to the side 

 where least resistance was opposed. The shrinking of the mass in 

 drying, and the operation of earthquakes, might, he supposed, have 

 further assisted in the production of such rents. Having thus 

 accounted for the origin of the fissures, he believed, and endeavoured 

 to prove, that the materials filling the veins were introduced into 

 them from above, and that the mass of veins have been formed by a 

 series of precipitations from water, which have filled, in whole or in 

 part, the spaces or fissures ; that these precipitations entered by the 

 superior parts of the rents which were open, and were furnished by 

 a solution in water, generally chemical, which covered the country in 

 which these rents existed. To account for the high degree of crystal- 

 lisation which prevails in the veins, he supposed that the precipitations 

 and depositions which formed them were made with more tranquillity 

 than those which produced beds and formations; that mechanical 

 solutions and depositions had disturbed the formation of veins much 

 less than of beds, and that the spaces in which veins are found pre- 

 served for a longer time the faculty of receiving and retaining different 

 solutions. (Playfair, ' Edin. Review,' vol. xviii.) 



A French translation of the work, by D'Aubuisson, appeared at 

 Paris in 1802, and an English translation by Dr. Anderson, at Edin- 

 burgh in 1809. This was the last work Werner wrote. It is said he 

 had a most singular aversion to the mechanical act of writing, which 

 he carried to such an extreme as never to reply to letters, and which 

 even deterred him from reading them, least he should be tempted to 

 reply. 



In 1792 he was appointed Counsellor (Bergrath) of the mines of 

 Saxony. Von Charpentier held the situation of Captain-general (Berg- 

 hauptmaun) in the same establishment, and there appears to have 

 been a feeling of rivalry between the two officers, although the labours 

 of Charpentier were principally confined to the practical details of 

 mining. In 1795 or 1796 Werner introduced into his lectures the 

 doctrine of a new class of rocks, to which, as lying between the pri- 

 mitive and secondary or flb'tz, he gave the name of ' transition.' The 

 total number of distinct formations or rocks of all these classes to 

 which he assigned precise relative places, was between thirty and forty. 

 The establishment of the transition class completed Werner's labours, 

 and the promulgation and further illustration of his views now occu- 

 pied his lectures. He had at this time acquired a great celebrity 



