INTRODUCTION. 9 1 



papers to Leonhard's Taschenbuch fur J\fi/teralogie and other 

 iournals. 



Escher's modest personality is endeared in the minds of all 

 Alpine geologists. His quiet, persistent spirit of inquiry 

 enabled him to amass innumerable observations, which not 

 only afforded a reliable framework for the future, but also 

 contained the kernel of some of the grandest mental concep- 

 tions of geological phenomena that have been attained during 

 the progress of Swiss geology. 



While Escher's work is so empirical and technical in its 

 tendency as to have retained its freshness for the specialist, his 

 contemporary, J. G. Ebel, 1 has left a work whose chief 

 interest now is for the historian, but which, nevertheless, was a 

 great achievement at the time. Ebel was the first to bring any 

 comprehensive account of Alpine geology to a relatively 

 successful fulfilment. The previous literature of Swiss geology, 

 from which Ebel drew his facts, embraced the works of 

 Scheuchzer and De Saussure, the series of accurate geological 

 sections prepared by the engineer of the Linth Canal, Hans 

 Conrad Escher, and the papers of the younger Escher, which 

 were then appearing in current magazines. De Luc and De 

 Saussure had contributed a few observations on the south- 

 west portion of the Swiss Jura mountains, and Count Razu- 

 mowsky had published his large work, Natural History of the 

 Jorat and its Surroundings, in the second volume of which 

 important suggestions had been given regarding the structure 

 of the Jura mountains. Ebel was also thoroughly familiar with 

 the geological literature of the German, Austrian, French, and 

 Italian Alps; in many cases he relied upon his own obser- 

 vations. . 



Ebel's description of the Alps was characterised by the 



1 John Gottfried Ebel, born 1764 in Ztillichau. Silesia, studied medicine, 

 then travelled three years in Switzerland, and in 1793 settled as a physician 

 at Frankfort-on-Main. A translation of the writings of Sieyes brought him 

 under political suspicion, and he was forced to leave Germany. He went 

 to Paris, where he continued to practise medicine, but spent a large portion 

 of his time in the pursuit of natural philosophy. In 1810 he selected Ziirich 

 for a residence, and died there in 1830. During his early years in Frank- 

 fort he published a " Guide," How to Travel in Switzerland in the most 

 Pleasant and Practical Way (4 parts, 1793), a work which has served as the 

 pattern of our present guide-books for travellers. His next work was A 

 Description of the Mountain-peoples of Switzerland, 1798-1802. His chief 

 geological work, On the Structure of the Earth in the Alpine Mountain' 

 System, was published at Zurich in 1808. 



