134 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



quarter of an hour to arrange his ideas, and when he 

 appeared before his audience he brought with him only 

 some scraps of paper, with a few words scribbled on them. 

 He never wrote a single lecture. By degrees he ceased 

 to write letters, even when the dearest friend begged for 

 a reply, and to save himself from the reproach of this 

 neglect, he came at last never to open the letters which 

 he received. Cuvier tells how once an author, desiring to 

 consult some of the learned men of the day concerning a 

 work which he proposed to publish, circulated his vol- 

 uminous manuscript among them. The precious parcel 

 disappeared in the circuit. After endless seeking, it was 

 disinterred in Werner's room from underneath some 

 hundreds of others. He never answered the Academy of 

 Sciences of Paris when it conferred on him the very 

 high distinction of electing him one of its eight foreign 

 associates, and he might never have heard of the affair 

 had he not come across the mention of it in some 

 almanack. "But," says Cuvier, "we forgave him when 

 we heard that about the same time a messenger sent 

 express by his sister from Dresden had been kept waiting, 

 at the professor's expense, for two months for a mere 

 signature to some pressing family document." 



Werner's life passed placidly in the midst of the work 

 which he loved and the pupils and friends who looked up 

 to him with veneration and affection. His health was 

 never robust, and the effort of lecturing proved sometimes 

 a great strain upon his energy. After a discourse in 

 which he would pour forth his ideas with the full flow of 

 his exuberance, the bodily and mental effort would be so 

 great that he would have to change his clothes even to his 



