76 



HUTTONIAN THEOEY. 



Ch. IV 



primary, rejecting the term 

 isider them as sedimentary 



some 



the waste of previously existing rocks. 



By this important discovery of granite veins, to which he 



from 



Hutto 



stems 



on 



of his predecessors. Vallisneri had pointed out 

 the general fact that there were certain fundamental rocks 

 which contained no organic remains, and which he supposed 

 to have been formed before the creation of living beings. 

 Moro, Generelli, and other Italian writers, embraced the 



same 



mountains 



him primitive 



The same tenet was an article of faith in the school of 

 Freyberg: and if anyone ventured to doubt the possibility 

 of our being enabled to carry back our researches to the 

 creation of the present order of things, the granitic rocks 



triumphantly 



them 



memorable 



Dinanzi a me non fur cose create 

 Se non eterne j ' * 



small 



was 



Hutton seemed. 



with nnhallowed hand, desirous to erase characters already 



regarded by many as sacred. 



In the economy of the 



world/ said the Scotch geologist, ' I can find no traces of a 

 beginning, no prospect of an end ;' a declaration the more 

 startling when conpled with the doctrine, that all past ages 

 on the globe had been brought about by the slow agency of 

 existing causes. The imagination was first fatigued and 

 overpowered by endeavouring to conceive the immensity of 

 time required for the annihilation of whole continents by so 

 insensible a process ; and when the thoughts had wandered 

 through these interminable periods, no resting-place was 

 assigned in the remotest distance. The oldest rocks were 



* ' Before me things create were none, save things 

 Eternal.' 



Dante's Inferno, canto iii., Gary's Translation 









C* 



ce 



