MODERN GEOLOGY 



NEPTUNISTS VERSUS PLUTONISTS 



In the mean time, James Button's theory that con- 

 tinents wear away and are replaced by volcanic up- 

 heaval gained comparatively few adherents. 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 Hutton'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 af- 

 firmed that all rocks, of whatever character, 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 metamorphosis 

 of rocks through the agency of heat. 



The followers of Werner came to be known as Nep- 

 tunists ; the Huttonians as Plutonists. The history of 

 geology during the first quarter of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury is mainly a recital of the intemperate controversy 

 between these opposing schools; though it should not 

 be forgotten that, meantime, the members of the Geo- 

 logical Society of London were making an effort to hunt 

 for facts and avoid compromising theories. Fact and 

 theory, however, were too closely linked to be thus di- 

 vorced. 



The brunt of the controversy settled about the un- 

 stratified rocks granites and their allies which the 



