ORIGIN OF STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 5 



viewed as a mass of sediment from the waters of " the deluge " ; and 

 on the other, exhibited the most important subject of inquiry respect- 

 ing the constitution of the earth, and fixed a precise method of inves- 

 tigating it. 



That Werner's classification is partly erroneous in principle, and in 

 all respects incomplete, and inadequate to the rigour of modern inves- 

 tigation, is apparent at a first glance, but it obviously contains the 

 essence of rightly planned arrangements, viz., a determined reference 

 to the relative antiquity of the deposit. Werner is, therefore, entitled 

 to the distinguished praise of clearly announcing and striving earnestly 

 to establish one of the most important general laws yet ascertained 

 respecting the structure of the earth. He proved that in a particular 

 district its stratified rocks are laid one on another in a certain order of 

 succession, and affirmed that the same, or a very similar order, pre- 

 vailed over large parts of the earth's surface. 



Michell. One of the ablest of the natural philosophers of England 

 during the middle of the eighteenth century, who, for a short time, 

 filled the Woodwardian chair of geology at Cambridge, and afterwards 

 resided in Yorkshire, had certainly made himself acquainted with 

 the series of English strata, especially in the northern counties, and 

 had even gone so far as to discover some of the most important 

 general relations between the geological structure and the physical 

 features of the globe, defining with a masterly hand the mutual 

 dependence of mountain ranges and lines of stratified rocks. 



In frequent journeys between Cambridge and Yorkshire, mostly 

 performed on horseback, he composed a useful section of the strata 

 between the chalk hills of Bedfordshire and the coal strata of Not- 

 tinghamshire, but never printed an account of his discoveries. What 

 he stated concerning the succession of strata in Derbyshire and other 

 parts, was chiefly derived from the miners and colliers, who, certainly, 

 for a hundred years before the dawn of sound geology, knew perfectly 

 the almost invariable sequence of strata in their own districts. 



4. Inductive Geology principally founded on the Organic Re- 

 mains. The great fact upon which, in modern times, geological 

 inquiries have hinged, the occurrence of marine animals far from the 

 sea and deep in the solid earth, was so far understood by the ancients, 

 that they had ascertained the general agreement of fossil and recent 

 marine shells. 



But the sixteenth century was wholly wasted among the naturalists 

 of Italy, France, England, and Germany in the ridiculous dispute 

 whether fossil shells were genuine marine exuviae, or mere lusus 

 naturae produced by a plastic power of fermenting fatty earth ? and 

 the inquiry assumed a more difficult character from the addition of 

 the question, whether, if they were genuine petrifactions, they were 

 all deposited by the Noachian deluge 1 



In examining both of these points the Italian philosophers 



were by far the most conspicuous, and it is difficult to understand 



how the sound conclusion of Fracastorio (1517), Scilla 



1 La Vana Speculazione Disingannata, Napoli, 1670. 



