the late Professor Jameson. 27 
museum, and the publication of a System of Mineralogy, and 
volume on the Characters of Minerals, fully occupied all his 
leisure time. Both of these works were highly thought of, 
and ran speedily through large impressions. 
In 1808, he founded at Edinburgh the Wernerian Natural 
History Society ; a society which has eminently contributed 
to the great advancement which has taken place in our na- 
tional cultivation of those sciences ; and he was elected per- 
petual President,—Dr Neill being the devoted secretary* of 
the Wernerian Society. Seven volumes of Transactions and 
Memoirs have been published, to which the Professor was a 
frequent and efficient contributor. 
In 1809, he gave the world, in one volume octavo, the 
“ Klements of Geognosy,” the whole impression of which was 
sold off ina few months. The doctrines of the Wernerian 
school were unknown to Dr Hutton; nor were they intro- 
duced effectively in England till the publication of Professor 
Jameson’s Elements of Geognosy in 1808 ; the professed ob- 
ject of that work being to make known the view of his mas- 
ter respecting the composition and structure of the globe. 
But the Neptunian theory, as modified by Werner, was so 
intimately incorporated with the system, that it was scarcely 
practicable in discussion to separate the doctrine from the 
facts. The result was a division of the northern geologists 
of Britain into the Wernerian and Huttonian doctrines; and 
their warfare, though party-spirit may for a time have caused 
some inconvenience, was ultimately useful, by exciting at- 
tention and diffusing a taste for geology. The Wernerians 
had very much the advantage over most of their opponents, 
in their acquaintance with the character and relations of 
rocks. The progress, therefore, which geology for some 
years made under their hands, no doubt had been much more 
rapid, but in the theoretic trammels much incumbered them. + 
* It is much to be regretted that we have not as yet a biography of our ex- 
cellent friend and highly esteemed citizen.— EDIT. 
t Ami Boué, in speaking of the Wernerian and Huttonian views, says: “ Pro- 
fessor Jameson well deserves high honours conferred on him by his city and 
country, for the services he has rendered to science. He has spread valuable 
_ working pupils all over the world, and he was the electric spark which origi- 
nated the beginning of true geology in Great Britain. The battles of his Wer- 
