48 Charles Schuchert — Historical Geology, 1818-1918. 



theory, whether directly by his own teaching, or indi- 

 rectly by the labors of his pupils and followers, much of 

 his influence was disastrous to the higher interests of 

 geology." 



Werner arranged the crust of the earth into a series of 

 formations, as had been done previously by Lehmann 

 and Fuchsel, and one of his fundamental postulates was 

 that all rocks were chemically precipitated in the ocean 

 as "universal formations." For this reason Werner's 

 school were called the Neptunists. Nowhere, however, 

 did he explain how and where the deep and primitive 

 ocean had disappeared. 



According to Werner, the first formed or oldest rocks 

 were the chemically deposited Primitive strata, including 

 granite and other igneous and metamorphic rocks. On 

 these followed the Transition rocks, the earliest sedi- 

 ments of mechanical origin, and above them the Floetz 

 rocks, a term for the horizontal stratified rocks. These 

 last he said were partly of chemical but chiefly of mechan- 

 ical origin. Last of all came the Alluvial series. 



The existence of volcanoes had been pointed out long 

 before Werner's time by the Italian school of geologists, 

 but as for "the universality and potency of what is now 

 termed igneous action," all was "brushed aside by the 

 oracle of Freiberg." Eeactions between the interior 

 and exterior of our earth "were utterly antagonistic to 

 Werner's conception of the structure and history of the 

 earth." To him, volcanoes were "burning mountains" 

 that arose from the combustion of subterranean beds of 

 coal, spontaneously ignited. 



The breaking down of the Wernerian doctrines began 

 with two of Werner's most distinguished pupils, D'Au- 

 buisson de Voisins (1769-1819) and Von Buch. The 

 former in 1803 had accepted Werner's aqueous origin of 

 basalt, but after studying the celebrated and quite recent 

 volcanic area of Auvergne he recanted in 1804. Here he 

 saw the basaltic rocks lying upon and cutting through 

 granite, and in places more than 1200 feet thick. "If 

 these basaltic rocks were lavas," says Geikie, "they 

 must, according to the Wernerian doctrine, have resulted 

 from the combustion of beds of coal. But how could coal 

 be supposed to exist under granite, which was the first 

 chemical -precipitate of a primeval ocean!" 



Leopold von Buch (1774-1853), "the most illustrious 



