402 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS 
and the inaccurate or vague use of tbem, are among tlie 
greatest obstacles to the advancement of true science. This 
remark has been thought to be peculiarly applicable to the 
science in which we are more immediately interested, and 
which it is the object of the Wernerian Society more par- 
ticularly to advance. The introduction of many new terms 
has been objected to^ as tending only to overload and per« 
plex the nomenclature » I am far from allowing that the 
objection is in general well-founded, though there may, 
perhaps, be found a few instances in which it is ; but my 
object at present is to shew, that the word Geognosy, as 
introduced by Werner into the department of Mineralogy 
(and which has been much exclaimed against as unnecessary 
and superfluous), is by no means so. We all know, that, 
previously to liim, there had been numerous attempts made 
to account for the pre'seiit arrangement and state of tne 
materials of which the globe of the earth is composed, or 
to show what particular agent or agents had operated, in 
the way of natural causes, to bring into their present form 
and situation the substances of the mineral kingdom. 
These attempts, which have been called Theories of the 
Earth, had, before the age of Werner, proceeded upon 
by far too limited a knowledge of minerals, and had taken 
for granted a thousand things which the authors of the re~ 
spective theories could by no means prove. They were, in 
fact, little more than fancies, — -a sort of philosophical ro- 
mances, which might amuse the imagination, but conveyed 
no real knov/ledge. 
As was not unlikely to happen, the first theorists turned 
their attention more particularly to a great and remarkable 
event recorded in history (in the oldest history by far now 
extant), and of which we have also traditional accounts, 
more or less distinct, in almost every part of the world. 
They supposed the Earth to have been created in a certT?in 
