IO4 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



Werner was born on 25th September 1749 at Wehrau 

 on the Queiss in Upper Lusatia, 1 His ancestors had been 

 engaged in the iron industry of that region of Germany for 

 some 300 years. His father was inspector of Count Solms' 

 foundry, and at one time it seemed as though the future 

 mineralogist were to carry on, in the same profession, the 

 traditions of the family. From infancy he was familiar 

 with stones. When still hardly able to speak, it was one 

 of his favourite amusements to break down pieces of sand- 

 stone and marl. After he had begun to learn his alphabet, 

 his father, as a reward for proficiency in his lessons, would 

 allow him to look over a small collection of minerals which 

 he kept in a box, and would talk to him about them, their 

 origin and their uses. Late in life Werner could vividly 

 recall the very minerals that were the playthings of his 

 childhood various ores and spars, as well as some varieties 

 of which his father did not know the names. When he 

 could read, his favourite books were lexicons of mining and 

 manufactures, wherein he specially selected the articles on 

 mineralogy. His tendencies, thus early shown, were further 

 fostered by his father, who in hours of leisure would enter- 

 tain him with stories of the mines. 



In his tenth year the boy went to school at the old 

 fortified town of Bunzlau in Silesia, and after a few years 

 returned in 1764 to assist his father and become controller 

 of the smelting-houses at Wehrau. But the aspirations he 



1 For the biographical details given in this sketch I am indebted partly 

 to the "Kurzer Nekrolog Abraham Gottlob Werners," by K. A. Blode, in 

 the Memoirs of the Mineralogical Society of Dresden, vol. ii. (1819), p. 249, 

 and partly to the jZloge on Werner by Cuvier. Blode, who had access to 

 family documents, gives 1749 as the year of Werner's birth ; Cuvier and 

 other authorities make it 1750. 



