APPENDIX. 



NOTE I. 



ELIE DE BEAUMONT, Perpetual Secretary to the Academy 

 of Sciences, and Professor at the College of France, has 

 undoubtedly exerted a greater influence on the course 

 and progress of science than any other modern geologist. 

 By reviving the ideas that had been first enounced by 

 Stenon in 1669, and by giving prominence to the obser- 

 vations of Saussure * and Werner f, M. de Beaumont 



* Saussure, who was born at Geneva in 1740, and died in 1799, 

 was the nephew of Bonnet, to whom he very probably owed that 

 taste for the natural sciences, which was still more strengthened by 

 his association with Haller. As early as his twenty-second year 

 he published a memoir, entitled Observations sur VEcorce des Feuilles 

 et des Petales. 



Notwithstanding the multiplicity of his labours, he returned after 

 various intervals to his botanical studies, and his last memoir, read 

 at the Academy of Geneva a few months before his death, had for 

 its object the study of the " constant direction of roots and stems." 

 Saussure occupied himself more especially with physics and geology, 

 and he added to the former of these sciences a new branch, viz. 

 Hygrometry, and also made some very valuable observations on the 

 structure of high mountains, which distinguished him among the 

 founders of geology. It is well known that he was the first who 

 ascended to the summit of Mont Blanc. 



f Werner, who was born at Welhau in 1750, and died at Dresden 

 in 1817, was the son of a manager of iron works. From his child- 

 hood he had been familiar with minerals, and this circumstance very 

 probably determined his future vocation. At the age of twenty- 



