1 46 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



" stands perplexed and embarrassed." Whatever he may 

 think of the basalts of Auvergne, he will not allow the 

 Vulcanist to wrest his admissions to any general conclusion 

 with regard to the German basalts. "Opinions are in 

 opposition which only new observations can remove." 



Von Buch's faith in the Wernerian interpretation of 

 volcanoes and basalt -hills had a rude shaking from his 

 excursions in Italy and Central France. His next great 

 journey taught him that "Werner's scheme of geological 

 succession could not be maintained. Before his volume 

 descriptive of the Italian tour was published, he had 

 started for Norway, where he remained hard at work for 

 no less than two years. Among the vast mass of import- 

 ant observations which he made, one that must have 

 greatly impressed him was that in which he satisfied 

 himself that the rocks in the Christiania district could 

 not be arranged according to the Wernerian plan. His 

 master's scheme of succession completely broke down. 

 Von Buch found a mass of granite lying among fossili- 

 ferous limestones which were manifestly metamorphosed, 

 and were pierced by veins of granite, porphyry, and 

 syenite. Such observations did not lead him, any more 

 than those in Central France, to a formal renunciation of 

 Wernerianism. But they enabled him to take a wide and 

 independent view of nature, and gradually to emancipate 

 himself from the narrower views in which he had been 

 trained at Freiberg. 1 



Von Buch's memorable investigation of the proofs of 

 the recent uprise of Scandinavia contributed still further 



1 See his " Reise nach Norwegen und Lappland," Gesammelte 

 Schriftcn, vol. ii. p. 109. 



