﻿Yol. 64.] ANNIVEESAEY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixxi 



But in spite of their resolve not to commit themselves to any 

 theory of the earth, it was almost inevitable that the early members 

 of the Geological Society, who were for the most part mineralogists, 

 should incline towards the doctrines of Werner, wherein mineral ogical 

 considerations played so important a part. Some of them, indeed, 

 had actually studied under Werner himself at Freiberg, and would 

 naturally adopt his system of classification and his terminology, and 

 apply them to the rocks of Britain. Hence the papers that appeared 

 in the three earliest volumes of our Transactions were in large 

 measure framed on the Wernerian model. That this should have 

 been the case with those of J. F. Berger was to be expected, for 

 that observer had been a pupil of the great Freiberg professor, and, 

 when employed for some years by a few members of the Society to 

 describe the geology of different parts of our islands, he naturally 

 used the language which he had learnt from his master. Yet even 

 he, when he came to apply the Wernerian classification to the 

 rocks of Devon and Cornwall, found himself puzzled to decide 

 whether the serpentine of that district should be assigned to the 

 ' older ' or ' younger formation ' of Werner ; and he even ventured 

 to assert his independence so far as to regard the distinction 

 between the two to be so vague as to lead to a suspicion that ' the 

 terms were designedly obscure, in order to avoid being more explicit 

 in the definition.' But, like a true disciple of the Neptunist school, 

 he could see no evidence that the Cornish granite had been injected 

 into the grauwacke. On the contrary, he thought that it may 

 have been ' softened by the grauwacke acting upon it as a solvent,, 

 so far as to permit pieces of that rock to amalgamate with it.' ^ 



On the whole, however, the reticence of the early contributors 

 to the Society's publications in the assertion of theoretical opinions 

 is a marked characteristic of their papers. Thus, when Arthur 

 Aikin presented his account of the W^rekin and the Coal-field of 

 Shropshire, he adopted the Wernerian grouping of the formations, 

 but he was careful to guard himself by stating that, although the 

 greenstone of Steeraway Hill may have been the active agent in 

 tilting the limestone there, he was yet ' by no means prepared to 

 affirm that this fluidity was that of igneous fusion.' - Again, when 

 Dr. Kidd described the mineralogy of St. Davids, he announced his 

 conviction that the rocks of that district are ' all of chemical and 



1 Trans. Geol. Soc. ser. 1, vol. i (1811) pp. 137, 147 note. 



^ Ibid. p. 207. The same writer, some years later, when describing a bed of 

 'trap' in a Staffordshire colliery, woukl not decide as to the aqueous or igneous 

 origin of the rook, ibid. yol. iii (181G) p. 251. 



