INTERACTION OF THE SCIENCES 131 



tecture. Mountains and river-courses have bearing 

 on military tactics. He turned his linguistic knowl- 

 edge to account and furnished geology with a defi- 

 nite nomenclature. Alex. v. Humboldt, Robert Jame- 

 son, D'Aubuisson, Weiss (the teacher of Froebel), 

 were among his students. Crystallography and min- 

 eralogy became the fashion. Goethe was among the 

 enthusiasts, and philosophers like Schelling, under 

 the spell of the new science, almost deified the phys- 

 ical universe. 



Werner considered all rocks as having originated 

 by crystallization, either chemical or mechanical, 

 from an aqueous solution a universal primitive 

 ocean. He was a Neptunist, as opposed to the Vul- 

 can ists or Plutonists, who believed in the existence 

 of a central fiery mass. Werner thought that the 

 earth showed universal strata like the layers of an 

 onion, the mountains being formed by erosion, sub- 

 sidence, cavings-in. In his judgment granite was a 

 primitive rock formed previous to animal and vege- 

 table life (hence without organic remains) by chem- 

 ical precipitation. Silicious slate was formed later 

 by mechanical crystallization. At this period organ- 

 ized fossils first appear. Sedimentary rocks, like old 

 red sandstone, and, according to Werner, basalt, 

 are in a third class. Drift, sand, rubble, boulders, 

 come next ; and finally volcanic products, like lava, 

 ashes, pumice. He was quite positive that all basalt 

 was of aqueous origin and of quite recent formation. 

 This part of his teaching was soon challenged. He 

 was truer to his own essential purposes in writing a 

 valuable treatise on metalliferous veins (Die Neue 

 Theorie der Engange), but even there his general 



