X 
THE ANCIENT VOLCANOES OF GREAT BRITAIN 
Cuvier tells us that wheu some of the ardent upholders of the Freiberg faith 
came to consult Desmarest, the old man, who took no part in the fray, would 
only answer, “ Go and see.” He felt that in his memoir and maps he had 
demonstrated the truth of his conclusions, and that an unprejudiced observer 
had only to visit Auvergne to be convinced. 
By a curious irony of fate it was from that very Auvergne that the 
light broke which finally chased away the Wernerian darkness, and it was 
by two of Werner’s most distinguished disciples that the reaction was 
begun. 
Daiibuisson, a favourite pupil of the Freiberg professor, had written and 
published at Paris in 180:1 a volume on the Basalts of Saxony, conceived 
in the true Wernerian spirit, and treating these rocks, as he had been 
taught to regard then, as chemical precipitates from a former universal 
ocean. In the following year the young and accomplished Frenchman 
went to Auvergne and the Vivarais that he might see with his own eyes 
the alleged proofs of the volcanic origin of basalt. Greatly no doubt to his 
own surprise, he found these proofs to be irrefragable. With praiseworthy 
frankness he lost no time in publicly announcing his recantation of the 
Wernerian doctrine on the subject, and ever afterwards he did good service 
in making the cause of truth and progress prevail. 
Still more sensational was the conversion of a yet more illustrious 
prophet of the Freiberg school — the great Leopold von Buch. He too 
had been educated in the strictest Wernerian faith. But eventually, after 
a journey to Italy, he made his way to Auvergne in 1802, and there, in 
presence of the astonishing volcanic records of that region, the scales seem 
to have fallen from his eyes also. With evident reluctance he began to 
doubt his master’s teaching in regard to basalt and volcanoes. He went into 
raptiu’es over the clear presentation of volcanic phenomena to be found in 
Central France, traced each detail among the puys, as in the examination of 
a series of vast models, and remarked tliat while we may infer what takes 
place at Vesuvius, we can actually see what has transpired at the Buy de 
Pariou. With the enthusiasm of a convert he rushed into the discussion 
of the phenomena, but somehow omitted to make any mention of Des- 
marest, who had taught the truth so many years before. 
Impressed by the example of such men as Daubuisson and Yon Buch, 
the Wernerian disciples gradually slackened in zeal for their master’s tenets. 
They clung to their errors longer perhaps in Scotland than anywhere else 
out of Germany — a singular paradox only explicable by another personal 
influence. Jameson, trained at Freiberg, carried thence to the University of 
Ediubiu'gh the most implicit acceptance of the tenets of the Saxon school, 
and continued to maintain the aqueous origin of basalt for many years 
