Ch. III.] 



MICIIELL.— CATCOTT. 



61 







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deduced, from original observations, the distinction of rocks 

 into primary, secondary, and tertiary, and showed that in 

 those districts there had been a succession of submarine 



volcanic eruptions. 



Michell, 1760.— In the following year (1760) the Rev. John 

 Michell, Woodwardian Professor of Mineralogy at Cambridge, 

 published in the Philosophical Transactions, an Essay on 

 the Cause and Phenomena of Earthquakes.* His attention 

 had been drawn to this subject by the great earthquake of 

 Lisbon in 1755. He advanced many original and philoso- 

 phical views respecting the propagation of subterranean 

 movements, and the caverns and fissures wherein steam 

 might be generated. In order to point out the application 

 of his theory to the structure of the globe, he was led to 

 describe the arrangement and disturbance of the strata, their 

 usual horizontality in low countries, and their contortions 

 and fractured state in the neighbourhood of mountain 

 chains. He also explained, with surprising accuracy, the 

 relations of the central ridges of older rocks to the ' long 

 narrow slips of similar earth, stones, and minerals, 5 which 

 are parallel to these ridges. In his generalisations, derived 

 in great part from his own observations on the geological 

 structure of Yorkshire, he anticipated many of the views 

 more fully developed by later naturalists. 



Catcott, 1761.— MichelPs papers were entirely free from all 

 physico-theological disquisitions, but some of his contempo- 

 raries were still earnestly engaged in defending or impugn- 

 ing the Woodwardian hypothesis. We find many of these 



* See a Sketch of the History of En- 

 glish Geology, by Dr. Fit-ton, in Edinb. 



and to have entirely discontinued his 

 scientific pursuits, exemplifying the 

 Rev. Feb. 1818, re-edited Lond. and working of a system still in force at 



Edinb. Phil. Mag. vol. i. and ii. 1832- 

 33. Some of Michell' s observations 

 anticipate in so remarkable a manner 

 the theories established forty years 

 afterwards, that his writings would pro- 

 bably have formed an era in the science, 

 if his researches had been uninterrupted. 

 He held, however, his professorship 

 only eight years, when his career was 

 suddenly cut short by preferment to a 

 benefice. From that time he appears to 

 have been engaged in his clerical duties, 



Oxford and Cambridge, where the chairs 

 of mathematics, natural philosophy, 

 chemistry, botany, astronomy, geology, 

 mineralogy, and others, being frequently 

 filled by clergymen, the reward of suc- 

 cess disqualifies them, if they conscien- 

 tiouslv discharge their new duties, from 

 farther advancing the cause of science, 

 and that, too, at the moment when their 



labours would naturally bear the richest 

 fruits. 



