in Werners Universal Ocean 117 



call this convexity an excavation, is to use such a freedom 

 with language as can only be accounted for by the per- 

 plexity in which every man, of whatever talents, must find 

 himself involved when he attempts to describe a whole, 

 of which the parts are inconsistent with one another." * 



The theory of a primeval universal ocean that over- 

 topped the mountains, which formed the basis of Werner's 

 teaching, led in every direction to such manifest contradic- 

 tions and absurdities, that we need a little patience and 

 some imagination to picture to ourselves how it could have 

 been received and fervently believed in by men of intel- 

 ligence, to whom the facts of the earth's structure were 

 not wholly unknown. It was claimed for Werner that 

 the doctrine of a universal and gradually subsiding ocean, 

 though it had been taught long before his time, was first 

 demonstrated by him to be true, (1) because he found the 

 older strata occupying the highest eminences, and the 

 younger coming in at successively lower levels, down to 

 the modern alluvia of the plains and the sea-shore, and 

 (2) because the primitive and loftiest rocks are entirely 

 formed of chemical precipitations, those of mechanical 

 origin not appearing until a much later period, and becom- 

 ing increasingly abundant down to the present time, when 

 they constitute almost all the deposits that are now taking 

 place. 2 



One of the most obvious questions that would arise, we 

 might suppose, in the mind of any student of ordinary 



1 Edin. Review, xviii. p. 90 (1811). 



2 Jameson's Geognosy, p. 78. Werner's followers, from the prominence 

 they gave to the sea in their geognosy, were styled Neptunists, while 

 those of Hutton, who dwelt ^on the potency of the earth's internal fire, 

 were dubbed Vulcanists. 



