PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 3 



He advanced the theory that the globe was once completely enveloped in water- 

 that is, that the water was high enough to cover the highest mountain. From 

 and in this water the rocks forming the basis of everything were chemically pre- 

 cipitated. These, according to Werner, included granite, gneiss, mica-slate, clay- 

 slate, serpentine, basalt, porphyry and syenite. He even asserted at first that the 

 chemical deposition was made in the order in which the rocks are here arranged. 

 These were his Primitive rocks, and they were foillowed by what he termed Transi- 

 tion rocks, some of which were of chemical deposition and some sedimentary. 

 Then came the so-called Floetz rocks, partly chemical, but in the main sedimen- 

 tary. It became necessary, however, to recognize the existence of volcanoes, and 

 he taught an eager, listening world that volcanoes were the result of the burning 

 up of seams of coal and other inflammable sediments; and that volcanic action 

 was one of the most recent of physical forces at work in the earth. If ever there 

 was an instance of the value of collecting facts, no matter how apparently dis- 

 sociated from each other, until a system could be built which would defy attack, 

 we have it in the Neptunist geology of Werner. He could not wait for facts, but 

 theorized most brilliantly on the basis alone of what could be gathered in the 

 mining district in which he lived. He contended that basalt was not volcanic, 

 and satisfied most people, after a violent controver.sy, that it was not, and that 

 obsidian and pumice were chemically deposited in water, while at the same time 

 in France the patient, tireless investigator, Demarest, who refused to theorize, had 

 laid before a world quite deaf to facts, the truth, as now recognized, regarding: 

 basalt and the real basis of what we know regarding volcanoes. 



It is true that the great founder of accurate geology, Hutton, did not upset the 

 theories of Werner and others by the aid of fossils, but he established forever the 

 value of ascertained facts, of real evidence as opposed to theory. He laid down 

 the great principle in geology, that we must judge of the action of the earth ni 

 the past by the action we see around us in the present. The doctrine of Uniformity 

 in its extreme form is. of course, disputed by many.'i> but the main principle as 

 here stat d is generally accepted. Hutton thus settled, in many cases for all 

 time, the manner in which the sedimentary I'ocks were created, setting aside the 

 absurd notion of Werner's ocean depositing, chemically and by sediments, layers 

 on the sloping sides of mountains covered to their tops by the sea. Hutton not 

 only understood correctly the forces creating rocks but the destructive forces 

 of erosion and the creation of watersheds and river systems. 



But although both Werner and Hutton knew that the various rocks were 

 created in succession and that in this succession there was an order which it was 

 desirable to understand, other men laid the real foundations of paheontology in 

 its relation to stratigraphy. As early as 1779 the Abbe Giraud-Soulavie, in France, 

 set forth in a paper a stratigraphical description of a district in France in which 

 the different strata were arranged by him in relation to their fossil contents, and 

 in which he demonstrated that in the older rocks the fossils had no similar living 

 species, while in some of the later rocks a percentage of the fossils were identical, 

 or nearly related to living species. Little attention, however, was paid to these 

 important truths, and his systematic arrangement of the rocks in question is not 

 now recognized. The Abbe was followed by two great Frenchmen whom the 

 world was obliged to regard. Cuvier and Brongniart were biologists who realized 

 that they could not disregard the biological relations of fossils to living forms. 

 Indeed, we owe it to Cuvior that paleontology is accorded its place in the study 

 of biology, while Brongniart, in his zoology of the Trilobites. thus early demon- 

 strated to what extent even an extinct tribe of crustaceans may be systematized 

 and accorded their place in the order of natural history. But at the moment we 



(i) Lord Kelvin "Popular Lectures and Addresses," vol. ii., paf^e 6, Prestwich'sGeolpyy,iS86, vol. i., page 2. 



