THE 
EDINBUEGH 
PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 
Art. I . — Historical Eloge of Abraham Gottlob Werner, 
read at a sitting qf the Royal Institute of France. By 
M. Le Chevalier Cuvier, Perpetual Secretary to the Royal 
Institute of France, &c. &c. &c. 
TD HE end of the seventeenth century saw a new science arise, 
which assumed, in its infancy, the proud name of the Theory of 
the Earth. Setting out from a small number of ill-observed 
facts, — connecting these together by fantastical suppositions, — 
it pretended to remount to the origin of worlds, to amuse itself, 
as it were, with them, and to form a history of them. Its arbi- 
trary methods, its pompous language, all seemed to disunite it 
from the other sciences ; and in fact, philosophers by profession 
excluded it, for a long time, from the circle of their studies. 
At last, after a century of ineffectual attempts, it has entered 
within the limits assigned to the human mind. Submitting it- 
self to the modest occupation of observing the globe as it ac- 
tually exists, it has penetrated into its bowels, and has made £t 
kind of dissection of it. From that period, it has taken its 
place among those departments of knowledge that are positive ; 
and, what is very remarkable, it has done so, without losing any 
thing of the marvellous which it had always possessed. 
The objects which have been given to it, to see and to touch, 
— the truths which it has every day been placing under our 
eyes, — are more admirable and more surprising than any which 
rash imaginations had amused themselves with conceiving. 
Two celebrated men, Pallas and Saussure, had prepared the 
way for this happy reform, — a third has accomplished it, — I 
VOL. IV. NO. 7. JANUARY 18S1. A 
