208 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



constituent of all mountain ranges, and that the remains of the mam- 

 moth and other large animals found in Siberia and the Arctics were 

 transported thence by floods from the region of the equator. This 

 last idea, it will be noted, took firm hold on at least one of our 

 American authors. 



During 1779-1796 the Swiss naturalist, De Saussure, had put out 

 three quarto volumes giving the results of his observations in the 

 Alps, and Lehman and Fuchsel, during 1756-1770, had published 

 important matter relative to the order of superposition of rocks. 

 Fuchsel, unfortunately, wrote wholly in Latin, and though his obser- 

 vations were important they created little impression. 



The two most prominent figures, and those whose views undoubt- 

 edly prevailed over all others, were the German, Werner, and the 

 Englishman, Hutton. Indeed, our history opens in the very midst of 

 a controversy between these two and their followers — between those 

 who believed with Werner that the various rocks of the earth's crust 

 were the result of a gradual precipitation from the waters of a uni- 

 versal ocean and who were not inaptly called Neptunists, and those 

 who recognized the efficacy of igneous agencies and were therefore 

 called Phctonists. 



It is, of course, impossible to state in the majority of cases whence 

 any writer may have drawn his inferences or inspiration. We may 

 know the literature of any given period, but we have no means of 

 knowing whether or not it was accessible to a writer or, indeed, if he 

 was aware of its existence. Discoveries in science, like inventions, 

 are rarely or never the work of a single brain, but are matters of 

 growth. Such result from the gradual accumulation of facts or ideas, 

 often seemingly wholly disconnected, but which some master mind 

 takes at the proper time and molds to his uses. ' 



What is commonly regarded as the first work on American geology 

 was Johann David Schopf s Beit/page zur Miner alogisc hen Kermtniss 

 von des Oestlichen Theils von Nbrd Amerika und seine Gebirge, pub- 

 lished in 17s7. Schopf came to America as a surgeon 



Schijpf's Work on . . . . _ . 



American Geology, to the Hessian troops during the war of the Kevolu- 



1787 



tion, and immediately after the treaty of peace in 1 783 

 made a tour throughout the Eastern States as far south as Florida. 



As a foreigner, whose results were published in Germany, Schopf s 

 work lies outside the limits of the present history. It may be said, 

 however, that he noted the close similarity throughout all its parts of the 

 Hat lands (coastal plain) extending from the western end of Long Island 

 to Florida, and that this was marked off from the hilly region to the 

 northwest by a double series of waterfalls in all the rivers emptying 

 into the Atlantic. Thus early was recognized the ''fall line" as a 

 physiographic feature of the American continent. 



