" a . e * 2 * 
: t.. o 
i Biography of Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs. mo 4 bs lal 
be throughout, founded upon positive knowledge, or be capable 
: . a 
be formed. It need not surprise us then that Fuchs has allowed 
— play of the imagination in his theory of the earth, as when 
ass 
f all others to become a proverb among geologists. “The same 
F oes not always happen in the same manner.” — 
oe views of Fuchs have found many objectors. Among 
nally in ‘a state of fusion, viz., that in such case all lime must 
exist now as silicate and none as carbonate, because at a 
>. asserting that the density of the vast quantity of aqueous vapor 
. | Mm the atmosphere at cose time would have been sufficient to. 
‘ Teplied,+ that at the fusing point of silica, a temperature 
| higher than that of melted platinum, the tension of carbonic acid 
m 
We 
See how impossible it is in this kind of study to avoid building . 
upon hypothesis, because we do not know even approximately 
\what is the melting point of silica, and still less are we acquainted 
With the conditions involved in the fasion of carbonate of lime, 
or what was the atmospheric pressure In those primeval times. 
* Berzelius Jabresbericht, 19, p. 742. 
+ In Dr. A. Wagner’s Geschichte der Urwelt, 1845. 
