Ch. VIII.] changes of NOMENCLATUEE. 89 



But the reverse is true in geology ; for here it is our work which contin- 

 ually outgrows the language. The tide of observation advances with such 

 speed that improvements in theory outrun the changes of nomenclature ; 

 and the attempt to inculcate new truths by words invented to express a 

 different or opposite opinion, tends constantly, by the force of association 

 to perpetuate error ; so that dogmas renounced by the reason still retain 

 a strong hold upon the imagination. 



In order to reconcile the old chronological views with the new doctrine 

 of the igneous origin of granite, the following hypothesis was substituted 

 for that of the Neptunists. Instead of beginning with an aqueous men- 

 struum or chaotic fluid, the materials of the present crust of the earth 

 were supposed to have been at first in a state of igneous fusion, until part 

 of the heat having been diffused into surrounding space, the surface of the 

 fluid consolidated, and formed a crust of granite. This covering of crys- 

 talline stone, which afterwards grew thicker and thicker as it cooled, was 

 so hot, at first, that no water could exist Upon it ; but as the refrigeration 

 proceeded, the aqueous vapor in the atmosphere was condensed, and, fall- 

 ing in rain, gave rise to the first thermal ocean. So high was the tem- 

 perature of this boiling sea, that no aquatic beings could inhabit its waters, 

 and its deposits were not only devoid of fossils, but, like those of some 

 hot springs, were highly crystalline. Hence the origin of the primary or 

 crystalline strata, — gneiss, mica-schist, and the rest. 



Afterwards, when the granitic crust had been partially broken up, land 

 and mountains began to rise above the waters, and rains and torrents to 

 grind down rock, so that sediment was spread over the bottom of the 

 seas. Yet the heat still remaining in the solid supporting substances 

 was sufficient to increase the chemical action exerted by the water, al- 

 though not so intense as to prevent the introduction and increase of some 

 living beings. During this state of things some of the residuary mineral 

 ingredients of the primaeval ocean were precipitated, and formed deposits 

 (the transition strata of Werner), half chemical and half mechanical, and 

 containing a few fossils. 



By this new theory, which was in part a revival of the doctrine of 

 Leibnitz, published in 1680, on the igneous origin of the planet, the old 

 ideas respecting the priority of all crystalline rocks to the creation of or- 

 ganic beings, were still preserved ; and the mistaken notion that all the 

 semi-crystalline and partially fossiliferous rocks belonged to one period, 

 while all the earthy and uncrystalline formations originated at a subse- 

 quent epoch, was also perpetuated. 



It may or may not be true, as the great Leibnitz imagined, that the 

 whole planet was once in a state of liquefaction by heat ; but there are cer- 

 tainly no geological proofs that the granite which constitutes the founda- 

 tion of so much of the earth's crust was ever at once in a state of universal 

 fusion. On the contrary, all our evidence tends to show that the formation 

 of granite, like the deposition of the stratified rocks, has been successive, 

 and that different portions of granite have been in a melted state at dis- 

 tinct and often distant periods. One mass was solid, and had been frac- 



