

70 



WEENEB. 



[Ch. IV. 



greatly to counterbalance the advantages which it derived from 

 his exertions. If it be true that delivery be the first, second 

 and third requisite in a popular orator, it is no less certain, 

 that to travel is of first, second, and third importance to 

 those who desire to originate just and comprehensive views 

 concerning the structure of our globe. Now Werner had 

 not travelled to distant countries ; he had merely explored a 

 small portion of Germany, and conceived, and persuaded 

 others to believe that the whole surface of our planet, and all 

 the mountain chains in the world, were m ade after the model 

 of his own province. It became a ruling object of ambition 

 in the minds of his pupils to confirm the generalisations of 

 their great master, and to discover in the most distant parts 

 of the globe his ' universal formations, 5 which he supposed 

 had been each in succession simultaneously precipitated over 

 the whole earth from a common menstruum, or ' chaotic fluid. 5 

 It now appears that the Saxon professor had misinterpreted 

 many of the most important appearances even in the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood of Freyberg. Thus, for example, 

 within a day's journey of his school, the porphyry, called by 

 him primitive, has been found not only to send forth veins or 

 dikes through strata of the coal formation, but to overlie 

 them in mass. The granite of the Hartz mountains, on the 

 other hand, which he supposed to be the nucleus of the 

 chain, is now well known to traverse the other beds, as near 

 Goslar; and still nearer Freyberg, in the Erzgebirge, the 

 mica slate does not mantle round the granite as was sup- 

 posed, but abuts abruptly against it. Fragments, also, of 



containing 



organic 



remains, were 



de 



the greywacke slate, 



found entangled in the granite of the Hartz, by M. 



Seckendorf."* 



The principal merit of Werner's system of instruction con- 

 sisted in steadily directing the attention of his scholars to 

 the constant relations of superposition of certain mineral 

 groups ; but he had been anticipated, as has been shown w 

 the last chapter, in the discovery of this general law, hy 



* I am indebted for this information 

 partly to Messrs. Sedgwick and Murchi- 

 son, who have investigated the country, man. 



and partly to Dr. Charles Hartmann, 

 the translator of this work into Ger- 





( 



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