64 A CENTURY OF SCIENCE 



earth." To him, volcanoes were "burning mountains" 

 that arose from the combustion of subterranean beds of 

 coal, spontaneously ignited. 



The breaking down of the "Wernerian doctrines began 

 with two of Werner's most distinguished pupils, D'Au- 

 buisson de Voisins (1769-1819) and Von Buch. The 

 former in 1803 had accepted Werner's aqueous origin of 

 basalt, but after studying the celebrated and quite recent 

 volcanic area of Auvergne he recanted in 1804. Here he 

 saw the basaltic rocks lying upon and cutting through 

 granite, and in places more than 1200 feet thick. "If 

 these basaltic rocks were lavas," says Geikie, "they 

 must, according to the Wernerian doctrine, have resulted 

 from the combustion of beds of coal. But how could coal 

 be supposed to exist under granite, which was the first 

 chemical precipitate of a primeval ocean?" 



Leopold von Buch (1774-1853), "the most illustrious 

 geologist that Germany has produced," after two years 

 spent in Norway was satisfied "that the rocks in the 

 Christiania district could not be arranged according to 

 the Wernerian plan, which there completely broke down. 

 Von Buch found a mass of granite lying among 

 fossiliferous limestones which were manifestly meta- 

 morphosed, and were pierced by veins of granite, por- 

 phyry, and syenite." Even so, he was not ready to 

 abandon the teachings of his master. After a study 

 of the mountain systems of Germany, however, "he 

 declared that the more elevated mountains had never 

 been covered by the sea, as Werner had taught, but were 

 produced by successive ruptures and uplifts of the ter- 

 restrial crust" (Geikie). 



Rise of Geology and Conformism. Modern geology 

 has its rise in James Button (1726-1797) of Edinburgh, 

 Scotland. In 1785 and 1795, Hutton published his 

 Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations. His 

 "immortal theory" is his only work on geology. "For- 

 tunately for Hutton 's fame and for the onward march of 

 geology, the philosopher numbered among his friends the 

 illustrious mathematician and natural philosopher, John 

 Playfair (1748-1819), who had been closely associated 

 with him in his later years, and was intimately con- 

 versant with his geological opinions." In 1802, Play- 



