VI 



Conclusion 285 



Pallas, and Fuchsel were physicians, led by their medical 

 training to interest themselves in natural history. Giraud- 

 Soulavie and Michell were clergymen. Murchison was a 

 retired soldier. Alexander Brongniart was at first engaged 

 in superintending the porcelain manufactory of Sevres. 

 Desmarest was a hard-worked civil servant who snatched 

 his intervals for geology from the toils of incessant official 

 occupation. William Smith found time for his researches 

 in the midst of all the cares and anxieties of his profession 

 as an engineer and surveyor. Hutton, Hall, De Saussure, 

 Von Buch, Lyell and Darwin were men of means, who 

 scorned a life of slothful ease and dedicated themselves 

 and their fortune to the study of the history of the earth. 

 Playfair and Cuvier were both teachers of other branches 

 of science, irresistibly drawn into the sphere of geological 

 inquiry and speculation. Of the whole gallery of worthies 

 that have passed before us there are only three that can 

 strictly be considered as professional goologists Werner, 

 Sedgwick and Logan. Were we to step outside of that 

 gallery, and select as many names of hardly inferior lustre, 

 we should find the proportions not to be seriously different. 

 From the beginning of its career, geology has owed its 

 foundation and its advance to no select and privileged 

 class of experts. It has been open to all who cared to 

 undergo the trial which its successful prosecution demands. 

 And what it has been in the past, it remains to-day. No 

 branch of natural knowledge lies more invitingly open to 

 every student who, loving the fresh face of Nature, is 

 willing to train his faculty of observation in the field, and 

 to discipline his mind by the patient correlation of facts 

 and the fearless dissection of theories. To such an inquirer 



