INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 619 



unguarded expressions alarmed the religious world ; and the odium of infidelity becoming 

 attached to his name, the current of public opinion set in strongly against his views. On 

 the other hand, Werner had obtained the adherence of the scientific, by his zeal and 

 eloquence ; and his system being supposed to be valuable evidence in favour of the diluvian 

 catastrophe in the sacred records, it received the homage of the public mind. The 

 continental geologists especially were steady Wernerians long after the doctrines of 

 Hutton had become the established faith of the English philosophers. Cuvier, in his 

 eloge of De Saussure, read in the year 1810, remarked, that " he overthrew the doctrine 

 of central fire of a source of heat placed in the interior of the globe," and continued to 

 the last " a believer in the aqueous origin of granite." Eight years afterwards, in 1818, 

 in pronouncing his eloge of Desmarest, Cuvier speaks of a " new sect, to which the name 

 of Plutonians had been assigned, because they went so far as to attribute to the action of 

 fire, rocks, even the most universally expanded over the surface of the globe, and which 

 no person till then had ever dreamed of withdrawing from the domain of water !" Again, 

 in the same eloge, alluding to Von Buch's researches in Auvergne, Cuvier observes, with 

 surprise : " In his enthusiasm, from having been a zealous Neptunian, he became almost 

 Plutonian. It is not basalt alone that he ascribes to volcanic action : porphyry itself, 

 which forms a protuberance of more than sixteen leagues in diameter, of which Mont 

 D'Or is the centre, has been, if not thrown out, uplifted by volcanic power!" It is 

 evident, that down to the period referred to, the illustrious Frenchman was a disciple of 

 the Wernerian school ; and this was the case also with most of the continental physical 

 inquirers, when the igneous theory, having emerged from obscurity in England, had 

 conquered opposition, and won the assent of Jameson, Macculloch, Buckland, and 

 Conybeare. 



In a sketch of the progress of knowledge relative to the economy of the underlying 

 masses which observation can reach, it is impossible to omit the name of William Smith, 

 commonly, and justly, called the father of English geology, who, without the furniture 

 of high education, or the advantages of wealth and patronage, conducted a series of 

 laborious examinations of the stratified formations, chiefly in the midland and southern 

 counties of his native country, and arrived at the discovery of a fact, which Sedgewick 

 has styled " the master-principle of our science." Commencing his career as a humble 

 surveyor, his mind soon became impressed with a deep conviction of the regular succession 

 and continuity of strata ; and by a minute analysis of them, he grasped the truth, that the 

 organic remains of animal and vegetable life in the earth were definitely distributed. By 

 a course of patient investigation, he reached the sublime conclusion, that each stratum, 

 wherever it occurred, in detached masses, and in distant localities, presented its own 

 peculiar species of fossils, and might be identified by this characteristic mark ; so that, 

 exhibiting a particular fossil, it might instantly be declared from what rock, and even 

 bed of stone or clay, the specimen had been derived. The important doctrine was thus 

 established, that there had been a systematic succession of life in the ancient earth ; that, 

 during the formation of its stratified crust, different races of animals and plants had 

 appeared and vanished ; each stratified rock being thus a kind of museum, preserving 

 specimens of the organic life existing during the period of its deposition. The coming in 

 of new organic forms, and the extinction of those that pre-existed on the earth, realises 

 the sentiment expressed in a line of Ariosto, "Natura il fece, e poi ruppe la stampa" 

 " Nature made it, and then broke the die." Besides developing this important doctrine, 

 " Stratum Smith," as he was familiarly called, took the lead in constructing a geological 

 map of England, which, though superseded by the labours of Mr. Greenough, was worthy 

 of his name, and gave the hint for making those surveys, by the practical illustration of 

 their advantages, which Macculloch, Von Buch, and others followed in their respective 



