4 WERNER'S GEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. 



practical rules and inferences, may be readily pardoned for the deter- 

 mination which they manifested to uphold Werner's hypothetical 

 notions. But if we wish to ascertain the real value of the benefits 

 which the researches of Werner have conferred upon geology, we must 

 forget his theory, and view only the data which he collected for its 

 foundation. 



Werner was educated amidst the mines, and in the society of the 

 most eminent mineralogists of Saxony; their experience and their 

 opinions became his own, and doubtless swayed and directed the 

 energies of his mind. To judge from his own 

 works, and from the course which his pupils so 

 ^ on S P ur sued, the principal point of view under 

 which Werner contemplated the rocks and metallic 

 veins of Germany, was the relative period of 

 their production. Lehmann had, indeed, taken 

 the same course, and already distinguished Primary and Secondary 

 rocks, the former (a) existing in mountain chains, mostly stratified, 

 at high angles, and devoid of organic remains, the latter (b) dis- 

 posed more horizontally, and stored with the remains of life. But 

 Werner, with characteristic tact and boldness, applied 

 this method of investigation to every case, and took it 

 as the basis of his classification of rocks. 



Basis of his System. " When two veins (a I) 

 cross, and one of them (/;) cuts through the other (a), 

 Fi - 2 - the one which is divided (a) is the more ancient." 

 Among stratified rocks superimposed on one another, the lower 

 members of the series, those which lie nearest the centre of the earth, 

 were deposited first, and the relative antiquity of the different strata 

 is exactly in the order of their position. Thus c is the oldest rock of 

 the series c, d, e, /, g. 



By this manner of proceeding in the instance of the Harz Moun- 

 tains, Werner was enabled to frame a system or classification of rocks 

 iii the order of their respective position as far as could then be ascer- 



tained, and consequently in the order of their conse- 



? cutive formation. Thus the Brocken Mountain was 



- - described by Werner and his followers as a central 

 r d cone of granite, upon which on all sides round were 



c laid various other rocks in a certain and constant 



FiT order of succession; as granite, clay-slate, limestone, 



greywacke and greywacke-slate, old red sandstone, 

 limestones, gypsums, sandstones, and limestones ; the upper and newer 

 strata having their outgoing or terminal edges lower and lower con- 

 tinually. 



He presumed that the order of succession among these rocks in 

 Germany would be found to prevail in all parts of the world, and thus 

 announced a grand principle in the construction of the earth which 

 was destined to have a most beneficial effect on geological theory and 

 observation. For, on the one hand, it dissipated the chaotic dreams 

 of those who maintained that the whole crust of the earth was to bo 



