424 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAXJSSURE 



one of the most eminent founders of current geology, and the 

 chief of the early advocates of the Plutonic theory, was not 

 brought clearly and prominently before the world until de 

 Saussure's career was near its close, and there is no trace of his 

 having profited by it. 



In the building up of a new branch of scientific inquiry there 

 must always be room for various types of intellect. There is need 

 for both the flash of intuition and the more steady light thrown 

 by the collection, collation, and classification of field observations. 

 The former may often seize on a hypothesis which bears success- 

 fully the test of further inquiry. But though genius may thus aid 

 and shorten the task of research, it can never dispense with 

 it. It fell to de Saussure in an age too much given to theorise 

 to assert the prominent part that fieldwork must play in all 

 geological investigation, to recognise and enforce the lesson that 

 the story of the earth was not to be revealed by flights of poetical 

 imagination, but unravelled by laborious examination of the nature 

 and origin of the materials of which our globe is composed, of the 

 sequence of the different formations and of their relations to one 

 another. His distinguishing claim to be a precursor is that he 

 was the first in his century to recognise and insist that a great 

 mountain chain such as the Alps, where the successive strata 

 have been twisted, broken, and exposed, affords the geologist the 

 most favourable opportunity for pursuing this inquiry. 'It is,' 

 he wrote, ' the study of mountains which above all else can quicken 

 the study of the earth, or geology.' I write, ' in his century,' for it 

 must never be forgotten that Leonardo da Vinci, who, had he not 

 been a supreme artist, might have been famous as one of the 

 greatest as well as one of the most versatile of scientific inquirers, 

 had two hundred years earlier touched in his Notes on many of 

 the problems of mountain structure and valley formation. 



' H ne concluait pas assez,' said Buffon of his Genevese visitor. 

 The criticism was not without some foundation, if the retort was 

 obvious. But it was de Saussure's highest title to praise that he 

 declined to submit his conclusions to the world until he had 

 secured a sufficient base for them. He was content to be a 

 quarrier, to provide material for the future use of himself and 

 others. I say of himself, for Cuvier in his Eloge must have been 

 under a misapprehension when he praised de Saussure for a delib- 



