r Guettard's Geographical Geology 1 7 



door. Guettard may be said to have buried his reputation 

 under the weight of material which he left to support it. 



I cannot pretend to have read through the whole of 

 these ponderous volumes. The leisure of a hard- worked 

 official does not suffice for such a task. But I have 

 perused those memoirs which seemed to me to give the 

 best idea of Guettard's labours, and of the value of his 

 solid contributions to science. And I shall now proceed 

 to give the results of my reading. No one can glance 

 over the kindly doge by Condorcet without a feeling of 

 respect and sympathy for the man who, under many 

 discouragements, and with but slender means, succeeded 

 in achieving so much in such a wide circle of acquire- 

 ment. And there is thus no little satisfaction in resus- 

 citating among American and English geologists the 

 memory of a man whom I trust that they will recognize 

 as one of the founders of their science, deserving a place 

 not inferior to that of some whom they have long held 

 in honour. 



And first with regard to Guettard's labours in the 

 domain of geographical geology, or the distribution of 

 rocks and minerals over the surface of the earth. I have 

 referred to the manner in which he was gradually drawn 

 into this subject by his botanical excursions. As the 

 result of his researches, he communicated in 1746 to the 

 Academy of Sciences in Paris a memoir on the distribution 

 of minerals and rocks. 1 Having been much impressed by 

 the almost entire absence of certain mineral substances 

 in some places, though they were abundant enough in 

 others, he was led to suspect that these substances are 



1 Mem. Acad. Roy. France, vol. for 1751. 

 C 



