﻿Ixxii PEOCEEDII-TGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I908, 



contemporaneous origin.' But at the same time, ' conceiving it 

 Avould be improper, on the present occasion, to enter into the 

 particulars or on the defence ' of this opinion, he thinks it more 

 * respectful to the Societ)' to be silent on those points.' ^ J. J. 

 Conybeare, too, while declaring that he could find no confirmation 

 of Plutonist views among the rocks of Cornwall, did not go further 

 than to say that he was ' strongly tempted to regard the elvans as 

 of contemporaneous formation with the schistose rock which they 

 traverse.' ^ 



The followers of Hutton within the Society do not seem to have 

 been always able to restrain the ardour of their belief with the 

 same success as their opponents. And, as their cause was mani- 

 festly gaining ground in the country, they became more outspoken 

 in the expression of their convictions. One of their number, 

 Leonard Horner (whom some of us well remember in his latest 

 years), avoiding theory, grouped the rocks of the Malvern Hills in 

 ' the primitive class of the Wernerian system,' but he could not 

 refrain, at the same time, from expressing his opinion that the 

 rocks of that district ' exhibit appearances very inconsistent with 

 the "Wernerian system of geognosy ' and from declariog that, in 

 his judgment, ' the Huttonian theory ofiPers a more satisfactory 

 explanation of these phenomena than any other with which we are 

 yet acquainted.' The conclusion of his paper contains the following 

 passage : — 



' As I have related the facts I observed, independently of any theory, if they 

 are at all valuable in the geological history of this country, their vahie will 

 remain undiminished, whether the speculations I have entered into are just or 

 fallacious. If the geologist strictly guards against the influence of theory 

 in his observations of nature and faithfully records what he has seen, there is 

 no danger of his checking the progress of science, however much he may 

 indulge in the speculative views of his subject.' ^ 



A few years after the reading of Horner's paper, John Macculloch, 

 in one of his earliest communications to the Society, threw down the 

 gauntlet to the Xeptunists by bringing forward what he claimed to 

 be a crucial proof of the truth of Hutton's explanation of the 

 origin of ' trap ' or ' whinstone.' The case cited by him was that of 



1 Trans, ser. 1, vol. ii (1814) p. 93. 



2 Ibid. vol. iv (1817) p. 403. 



^ Ihid. vol. i (1811) p. 321. The danger, however, may have been more 

 real than Horner supposed. It is not evei*j mind that is gifted with the 

 power of keeping its observing faculty entirely unbiassed by the hypothetical 

 explanations which suggest themselves in the course of a research. 



