in Fitton on the Wernerians 133 



system, as it has to many other improvements ; they were 

 at first inventions of great utility; but being carried 

 beyond the point to which truth and matter of fact could 

 bear them out, they have become obstructions to all 

 further advancement, and have ended with retarding the 

 progress which they began with accelerating. This is so 

 much the case in the instance before us, that when a 

 Wernerian geognost, at present, enters on the examination 

 of a country, he is chiefly employed in placing the pheno- 

 mena he observes in the situations which his master has 

 assigned to them in his plan of the mineral kingdom. It 

 is not so much to describe the strata as they are, and to 

 compare them with rocks of the same character in other 

 countries, as to decide whether they belong to this or that 

 series of depositions, supposed once to have taken place 

 over the whole earth ; whether, for example, they be of 

 the Independent Coal or the Newest Floetz-trap formation, 

 or such like. Thus it is to ascertain their place in an 

 ideal world, or in that list of successive formations which 

 have nothing but the most hypothetical existence : it is 

 to this object, unfortunately for true science, that the 

 business of mineralogical observation has of late been 

 reduced." 1 



Werner's writings are so few and slight that his dis- 

 ciples and admirers continually expressed their sorrow 

 that he would leave so little behind him save his world- 

 wide fame. His natural dislike of the pen increased with 

 his years. He would discourse eloquently on many subjects, 

 but could never bring himself to write fully on any one. 

 Usually when he went to lecture he would retire for a 



1 Edin. Review, vol. xviii. (1811), art. 3, pp. 96, 97. 



