i Guettard and the Auvergne Volcanoes 39 



Guettard believed that he had amassed material enough to 

 prove the main question which interested him that there 

 had formerly been a series of active volcanoes in the heart 

 of France. So he prepared an account of his observations, 

 and read it to the Academy of Sciences on 10th May 1752. 

 This early memoir on the extinct volcanoes of Europe 

 must not be tried by the standard which has now been 

 attained in the elucidation of volcanic rocks and the 

 phenomena of ancient eruptions. We should be unjust if 

 we judged it by the fuller knowledge obtained of the 

 same region of France by the more detailed examination 

 of other observers even in Guettard's lifetime. Desmarest, 

 to whose splendid achievements I shall refer in my next 

 lecture, was conspicuously guilty of this injustice. He 

 would never allow Guettard credit for his work in 

 Auvergne, finding fault with it because it was imperfect 

 and inaccurate. He wished that, before writing on the 

 subject at all, his predecessor had studied the ground 

 more carefully and in greater detail, and had attended to 

 the different conditions and dates of the eruptions. " Can 

 we regard as a true discovery," he asks, " the simple 

 recognition of the products of volcanic action, when the 

 facts are presented with so little order and so much con- 

 fusion ? Such a discovery implies a reasoned analysis of 

 all the operations of fire, of which the results have been 

 studied, so as to reveal the ancient conditions of all the 

 volcanic regions. Without this it is impossible to dignify 

 the recognition of a few stones with the name of a dis- 

 covery that will advance the progress of the natural his- 

 tory of the earth." l Could any judgment be more unfair ? 



1 Geographic Physique, Art. "Guettard." 



