426 LIFE OF HOKACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



Professor Alphonse Favre probably contains the germs of what 

 de Saussure had in his mind. The Theory of the Earth, de Saus- 

 sure writes, ' is the science which explains the causes of the modi- 

 fications which the earth has undergone since its first formation 

 up to our own days, and aids us to foresee those it will undergo 

 in the future. Our only means of arriving at a knowledge of these 

 modifications and their causes is by studying the present state 

 of the globe in order to remount gradually to its preceding states, 

 and to arrive at probable conjectures as to its future. The actual 

 condition of the earth is the only solid base on which it is possible 

 to theorise. Reason therefore requires that we should begin by 

 giving a description of the terrestrial globe. This description, in 

 order to be methodical, must start from general features and come 

 afterwards to details which should be gone into in proportion as 

 they seem more important and less known.' * 



Unhappily, all that survives of this proposed statement of the 

 Theory is its skeleton. It was to have been divided into three 

 parts. The first would have comprised the general results ob- 

 tained by workers in natural science. De Saussure 's intention 

 was to describe the various characters of the rocks that compose 

 the mountain ranges, and to deal more fully than he had hitherto 

 done with the conclusions to be drawn from the fossils found in 

 them. Since the earth's surface is profoundly modified by its 

 outer envelope, the effects of air, moisture, heat, light, and elec- 

 tricity were to have been treated. The second part was to have 

 been an exposition of physical and chemical laws, including that 

 of gravitation ; in the third part he proposed to arrange the 

 facts set forth in the first section under the laws laid down in the 

 second. 



Had this programme been carried out we should doubtless 

 have had a work of great interest, and one full of suggestions for 

 de Saussure 's immediate followers. In a sense it might have been 

 only a temporary stepping-stone. For de Saussure, if prudent 

 in advancing any new hypothesis of his own, was also cautious 

 in dismissing those of his predecessors. Brought up to accept the 

 theory insisted on by Werner and known as the Neptunian, he 

 remained to the end of his life more or less under its influence. 



1 ' H. B. de Saussure et les Alpes,' Bibl. Univ. 1870. Read before the Swiss 

 Alpine Club at Geneva, 1869. 



