574 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



made such maps and the accompanying descriptions 

 possible, was that the strata and their contents had 

 previously undergone classification and arrangement 

 at the hands of the fathers of geology. Classifica- 

 tion, in this as in other cases, implied names which 

 should give to the classes distinctness and perma- 

 nence ; and when the series of strata belonging to 

 one country were referred to in the description of 

 another, in which they appeared, as was usually 

 the case, under an aspect at least somewhat dif- 

 ferent, the supposed identification required a peculiar 

 study of each case ; and thus geology had arrived 

 at the point, which we have before had to notice 

 as one of the stages of the progress of Classifica- 

 tory Botany, at which a technical nomenclature 

 and a well understood synonymy were essential 

 parts of the science. 



Sect. 3. Geological Nomenclature. 



BY nomenclature we mean a system of names ; and 

 hence vwe cannot speak of a geological nomencla- 

 ture till we come to Werner and Smith. The earlier 

 mineralogists had employed names, often artificial 

 and arbitrary, for special minerals, but no technical 

 and constant names for strata. The elements of 

 Werner's names for the members of his geological 

 series were words in use among miners, as Gneiss, 

 Grauwacke, Thonschiefer, Rothe todte liegende, 

 Zechstein ; or arbitrary names of the mineralogists, 





