226 
H'ERNERIAN SYSTEM. 
are still the objeclions derived from the appearances and pto- 
perties of minerals, which no hypothesis of this description 
can annul. Nor can volcanoes, whatever may have been their 
power, be admitted to possess now the didivsive mode of action 
thus supposed. If they were still, as Sir James Hall imagines, 
the unwearied artificers of revolution and regeneration, ought 
they not to be expected sometimes to reveal themselves, aird 
to break forth in new and various places ? Whereas the scenes 
of their activity are fixed ; and their immediate ravages con- 
fined ; nor have new ones, in any single instance, appeared in 
countries which did not bear evident marks of previous volcanic 
agency within the reach of historical record. 
Werner's ar- The arrangement of rocks, which Werner has adopted, is 
rockr”*^”*^ founded on the order of their superposition, in combination 
with hi* theory. He forms of them two great divisions, 
Jguatic and Ignigenous, and five classes denominated Primitive 
Transition, Floetx, uiUuvial, and Volcanic j and these are sub- 
divided into forty-six sections, of which some, in the Floetz- 
class, ai'e “ compound formations,” and consequently include 
rocks of several different kinds. 
Ilis classes do But though connected with his theory, the classes of Werner 
pond”wdth* his correspond with the stages of deposition, which he 
suppose,d supposes to have taken place. The first or primitive class ap- 
.stagesofdc- ^ 
position. pears to do so ; it is marked by an era in the supposed history 
of the globe :--*but from thence to the second and most impor- 
tant return of the dissolving fluid, the theory mentions but 
one uninterrupted retreat j the rocks, therefore, which such 
a movement should produce, ought all to have “ conformable” 
arrangement 5 and, in point of fact, all those of the second 
and third classes, except the newest Floelz-trap formation, do 
form in characters and composition a continued series ; “ Grey- 
wacke is a complete sandstone* 5” from thence the admixture 
of matter mechanically divided, goes on increasing ; and petri- 
factions, also, progressive in quantity, and in the scale of orga- 
nization, pervade the whole. There remains, then, as source* 
* Jameson, III, p. 93. 
of 
