"XXXIV PEOCEEDEirGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETT. 



medical student (1815-1818). The lectures of Prof. Jameson in 

 Edinburgh attracted his earnest attention, and strengthened that 

 desire to cultivate natural science which had been awakened by the 

 teaching of Dr. Kidd, in the dark chambers under the Ashmolean 

 Museum. The fight was then raging in Edinbui'gh between Hut- 

 tonians and Wernerians ; and the possession of Arthur's Seat and 

 SaKsbuiy Craig was sternly debated by the rival sects. Daubeny, 

 after quitting the University of Edinbm^gh, proceeded (in 1819) on 

 a leisurely tour through Erance, and sent to Prof. Jameson from 

 Auvergne the earliest * notices which had appeared in England of 

 that remarkable volcanic region. Some of the views afterwards 

 advanced by the young physicist touching the geological age of the 

 valleys of Auvergne t have been examined by later writers — Scrope, 

 Murchison, Lyell ; while the prehistoric antiquity of the volcanos 

 themselves has been questioned even within a few years, and de- 

 fended by none more effectually than by Dr. Daubenyt. Erom the 

 beginning to the end of his scientific career, volcanic phenomena 

 occupied the attention of Dr. Daubeny ; and he strove by frequent 

 journeys abroad — through Hungary and Transylvania, Italy, Sicily, 

 Erance and Germany — to extend his knowledge of that interesting 

 subject. In 1823-1825 he had by this means prepared the basis of 

 his great work on Yolcanos, which appeared in 1826, and contained 

 careful descriptions of all the regions known to be visited by igneous 

 eruptions, and a consistent hypothesis of the cause of thermic dis- 

 turbance, in accordance with the views of Gay-Lussac and Davy. 

 Water, admitted to the uncombined bases of the earths and alkahs 

 existing below the oxidized crust of the globe, was shown to be an 

 efB-cient cause of local high temperatiu-e, and a real antecedent to 

 the earthquake movements, the flowing lava, and the expelled gas 

 and steam. In later years Dr. Daubeny fi^eely admitted, as at least 

 very probable, a high interior temperature of the earth ; but he did 

 not allow that the admission of water to a heated interior oxidized 

 mass would account for the chemical effects which accompany and 

 follow an eruption §. On this point we have still data to be gathered 

 and inferences to be examined. 



Eour years previous to the publication of the ' Description of 

 Yolcanos,' Dr. Daubeny was appointed to succeed Dr. Kidd as Pro- 

 fessor of Chemistry, and took up his abode in, or rather below, 

 the time-honoured museum founded by Ashmole. In these rather 

 gloomy apartments nearly aU the scientific teaching of Oxford had 

 been accomplished since the days of Hobert Plot ; in them were 

 still collected (in 1855), by gas-light and furnace-fires, the most 

 zealous students of practical chemistry ; but now they are filled 

 with Greek sculpture ; and chemistry has flitted to the magnificent 

 laboratories of the University Museum, dii'ected by Sir Benjamin 



* " Letters on the Yolcanos of Auvergne," in Jameson's Edinbiu'gh Journal, 

 vol. iii. p. 359, and yoL iv. pp. 89 & 300, 1820-1821. 



t Edinburgh New Phil. Journ. rol. x. p. 201, 1831. 



I Quarterly Journal of Science, vol, iii. 1866, p. 199, 



§ '• Memoir on the Thermal Waters of Bath," Brit. Assoc. Eeport, Trans. 

 Sects. 1864, p. 26. 



