INTERACTION OF THE SCIENCES 135 



sea ; it is elevated, after consolidation, into the over- 

 hanging mountains. The earth is more than a mech- 

 anism, it is an organism that repairs and restores 

 itself in perpetuity. Thus Hutton explained the com- 

 position, dissolution, and restoration of land upon the 

 globe on a general principle, even as Newton had 

 brought a mass of details under the single law of 

 gravitation. 



Again, as Newton had widened man's conception 

 of space, so Hutton (and Buffon) enlarged his con- 

 ception of time. For the geologist did not under- 

 take to explain the origin of things ; he found no 

 vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end; 

 and at the same time he conjured up no hypothet- 

 ical causes, no catastrophes, or sudden convulsions 

 of nature ; neither did he (like Werner) believe that 

 phenomena now present, were once absent ; but he 

 undertook to explain all geological change by proc- 

 esses in action now as heretofore. Countless ages 

 were requisite to form the soil of our smiling val- 

 leys, but " Time, which measures everything in our 

 idea, and is often deficient to our schemes, is to na- 

 ture endless and as nothing." The calcareous remains 

 of marine animals in the solid body of the earth bear 

 witness of a period to which no other species of 

 chronology is able to remount. 



Button's imagination, on the basis of what can be 

 observed to-day, pictured the chemical and mechan- 

 ical disintegration of the rocks ; and saw ice-stmiins 

 bearing huge granite boulders from the declivities of 

 primitive and more gigantic Alps. He believed (as 

 Desmarest) that rivulets and rivers have constructed, 

 and are constructing, their own valley systems, and 



