CHAPTER IV 

 THE CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN GEOLOGY 



JAMES BUTTON'S theory that continents wear away 

 and are replaced by volcanic upheaval had gained com- 

 paratively few adherents at the beginning of our cen- 

 tury. Even the lucid Illustrations of the Huttonian 

 Theory, which Playfair, the pupil and friend of the 

 great Scotchman, published in 1802, did not at once 

 prove convincing. The world had become enamoured 

 of the rival theory of Button's famous contemporary, 

 Werner of Saxony the theory which taught that " in 

 the beginning" all the solids of the earth's present 

 crust were dissolved in the heated waters of a universal 

 sea. Werner affirmed that all rocks, of whatever char- 

 acter, had been formed by precipitation from this sea,, 

 as the waters cooled ; that even veins have originated 

 in this way ; and that mountains are gigantic crystals, 

 not upheaved masses. In a word, he practically ignored 

 volcanic action, and denied in toto the theory of meta- 

 morphosis of rocks through the agency of heat. 



The followers of Werner came to be known as Xep- 

 tunists; the Huttonians as Plutonists. The history of 

 geology during our first quarter-century is mainly a re- 

 cital of the intemperate controversy between these op- 



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