2I 6 EIGHTEENTH -CEKTURY. W. I"; 



him there followed many others, whom we cannot mention 

 here ; but the next whose name is famous was the great 

 Werner, professor of mineralogy at Freyberg in Saxony. 

 \ Werner caUs attention to Geology, 1775. Abraham 

 Werner, the son of an inspector of mines in Silesia, was 

 -born in 1750. His first playthings were the bright minerals 

 which his father's workmen gave him, so that he knew them 

 by sight, even before he could tell their names ; and as he 

 grew up he seemed to care for nothing but mineralogy and 

 the wonderful facts it revealed about the formation of the 

 earth. Freyberg, when he first began to lecture there, in 

 1 7 7 5> was on ly a small school for miners ; but it was not long 

 before he raised it to the rank of a university, so great was 

 the fame of his lectures. He pointed out to those who came 

 to learn of him, that the study of the rocks was something 

 more than merely searching for minerals; and that the crust 

 of the earth was full of wonderful histories, which might be 

 read by those who cared to take the trouble. He pointed 

 out how some formations were stratified, that is, arranged in 

 layers, and contained fossil shells and other organic remains ; 

 while, on the other hand, some were unstratified, and had 

 no fossils in them. Some rocks were bent, as in Fig. 37 ; 



FIG. 37. 

 Diagram of Bent Rocks. (Page.) 



others had been snapped asunder and forced one up and 

 the other down, as in Fig. 38 ; and he bade them try to seek 

 out the reason of these bendings and breakings of the earth's 

 crust. He reminded them also that mining was one of the 

 great roads to wealth, and that even the history of nations 

 often depended upon the kind of ground which they had 



