Ill 



Von Buck 143 



no secret, however, of his change of opinion, for in the 

 winter following his French tour, a letter from him was 

 published, recommending a geologist who wanted to see 

 volcanoes to choose Auvergne rather than Vesuvius or 

 Etna. 1 His views were thus well known to Haiiy and 

 Kamond when they recommended D'Aubuisson to betake 

 himself to the same volcanic region. 



When his fuller account of his rambles in Auvergne 

 appeared, its very first sentence betrayed a curious ignor- 

 ance or forgetfulness of the literature of the subject. 

 " Here we are," he says, " in a region about which the 

 naturalists of France have talked so much, to which they 

 have persistently referred us, but which they have never yet 

 described to us." It is difficult to believe that Von Buch 

 had never seen Desmarest's papers and accompanying 

 maps. Yet throughout the whole account which he gives 

 of his excursions he does not once refer to them, but writes 

 as if he were almost the first geologist who had ever made 

 any detailed and exact observations in the country. 2 



Nothing could be more explicit than Von Buch's testi- 

 mony to the volcanic origin of the basalts of Auvergne. 

 The marvellous cone and crater of the Puy de Pariou excited, 

 as they well might, his astonishment and admiration. 



1 Journal des Mines, vol. xiii. 1802-1803, p. 249. Boue, in an obituary 

 notice of Von Buch, says picturesquely that "in the year 1798 the learned 

 geognost left Germany a Neptunist and came home in 1800 a Vulcanist." 

 His conversion, though as complete, was not quite so rapid, for even after 

 his visit to Italy and Central France, though he gave up some parts of the 

 Wernerian system, he still clung tenaciously to others which he after- 

 wards abandoned. 



2 He refers indeed several times to Montlosier's Essai sur les volcans de 

 VAumrgne, which he calls an excellent work. In one passage he actually 

 credits this author with some of the most important generalizations made 

 by Desmarest. See pp. 279, 280. 



