Biographical Notice of Professor Jameson. 389 
mitted, it is te Werner that we are principally indebted for our 
present highly interesting views of the natural history of fossil 
organic remains ; and in confirmation of this opinion, Prof. Jame- 
son at a subsequent period vindicated the geognosy of Werner 
from the attacks made upon it by the Edinburgh Review. 
In 1804 Jameson returned to England in consequence of the 
state of his father’s health. Shortly afterwards, on the death of 
Dr. Walker in the same year, Jameson was appointed Professor of 
Natural History; and from that period, by his admirable lectures, 
founded in a great measure on the sound mineralogical and geo- 
logical views of his friend and master the Professor of Freiberg, 
he raised the Edinburgh school of Natural History to the proud 
preéminence it has occupied for the last half-century. In the 
same year, he published the first part of the first volume of his 
‘Mineralogical Description of Scotland ; his other labors, how- 
ever, prevented the completion of the work. In 1808 he founded 
at Edinburgh the Wernerian Natural History Society, of which 
he was elected perpetual President. 
in 1809 he published the ‘ Elements of Geognosy,’ a work 
which contributed more to introduce the doctrines of the Werne-_ 
rian school into England than any other publication ; and 
this time may be dated the antagonism between the Wernerian 
aud the Huttonian doctrines, as advocated by the northern geolo- 
gists. Nor was the spirit of partisanship thus engendered alto- 
gether useless, inasmuch as its final effect was to call attention to 
the study of, and to diffuse a more general taste for, geology. In- 
dependently of this, the modifieation of the Neptunian theery as 
adopted by Werner, and in which form Prof. Jameson introduced 
it to the notice of his countrymen, has been proved by the test of 
modern science to be more consistent with the phenomena of 
Nature than the Plutonian views of its adversaries. It has served 
of the earth’s crust, in harmony with the numerous organic re- 
mains which they contain, and which never could have been 
reconciled with the doctrines of the Huttonian theory. 
In 1818, at the suggestion of Professor Jameson, a translation 
of Leopold von Buch’s ‘ Travels through Norway and Lapland in 
1806, 1807, and 1808,’ was published by Mr. Black,—Jameson 
himself adding to the interest of the work by an account of the 
author, and by various notes illustrative of the natural history of 
