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Show 48 DUFFONtS DECLARATION. d Buffon ha nevet. pronf! t ed ' like Moro, by the observations of y alh.s nen. or h e never. co uld have imao·ined that the strata were b • • 11 'h : t I and that those which contam orgamc genera y onzon a ' f h . ~ remam. s h ad never been disturbed since the era o t 11e n· lOrmad- tw. n. H e was conscious of the great powe. r annu1a y exert· e1 b · nd marine currents in transportmg eart lY materia s ylriversl a 1 and he even contemplated the periol when they to ower eve s, . h · would destroy all the present contme~ts. ~lthoug 111 .geo-logy he was not an original observer, Ins gem us enabled him ~o render his hypothesis attractive; and by the eloquence of h~s t le and the boldness of his speculations, he awakened cun~ Jt/ and provoked a spirit of inquiry amongst his c?untryme~. Soon after the publication of his "Natural History," m which was included his '' Theory of the Earth," he received an officialletter (dated January, 1751), from the Sorbonne or Faculty of 'Theology in Paris, informing ~im that fourteen propositions in his works "were reprehensible and cont~ary to the creed of the church." The first of these obnoxwus passages, and the only one relating to geology, was as ~ollows. " The waters of the sea have produced the mountams and valleys of the land-the waters of the heavens, reducing all to a level, will at last deliver the whole land over to the sea, and the sea, successively prevailing over the land, will leave dry new con· tinents like those which we inhabit.'' Buffon was invited by the College in very courteous terms, to send in an explanation, or rathe1· a recantation, of his unorthodox opinions. To this he submitted, and a general assembly of the Faculty having approved of his " Declaration," he was required to publish it in his next work. The document begins with these words-" I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact; and I abandon everything in my book 'respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narration of Moses*,, The grand principle which Buffon was called upon to renounce was simply this, '' that the present mountains and valleys of the earth are due to secondary causes, and that the same causes will in time destroy all the continents, hills • llist. Nat. tom. v. Ed. de l'lm:p. Royale, Paris, 1769. IIOLLMANN-TARGIONI-ARDUINO• 49 and valleys, and reproduce others like them.,, Now, whatever may be the defects of many of his views, it is no longer controverted, that the present continents are of secondary oriO'in. The doctrine is as firmly established as the earth's rotation° on its axis ; and that the land now elevated above the level of the se~ will. n~t endure for ever, is an opinion which .gains ground daily, m proportion as we enlarge our experience of the changes now in progress. Hollmann was the author of a Memoir in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Gottingen in 1753, wherein he proposed an l1ypothesis closely corresponding to the opinions of Buffon ; and devoted the rest of his work to refuting certain diluvial theories of his day. Targioni, in his voluminous "Travels in Tuscany, 1751 and 1754," laboured to fill up the sketch of the geology of that region, left by Steno sixty years before. Notwithstanding a want of arrangement and condensation in his memoirs, they contained a rich store of faithful observations. He has not indulged in many general views, but in regard to the origin of valleys he was opposed to the theory of Bu.ffon, who attributed them principally to submarine currents. The Tuscan naturalist laboured to shew that both the larger and smaller valleys of the Apennines were excavated by rivers, and floods, caused by the bursting of the barriers of lakes, after the ret1·eat of the ocean. He also maintained that the elephants, and other quadrupeds so frequent in the lacustrine and alluvial deposits of Italy, had inhabited that peninsula; and had not been transported thither, as some had conceived, by Hannibal, or the Romans, nor by what they were pleased to term "a catastrophe of nature." . Arduino *, in his memoirs on the mountains of Padua, V1cenza, and Verona, first recoO'nized the distinction between • 0 primary, secondary, and tertiary rocks, and shewed that in those districts thet·e had been a succession of submarine volcanic eruptions. In the very same year the treatise of Lehman t, a German mineralogist, and director of the Prussian mines, appeared, who also divided mountains into three classes: the * Giornale del Griselini, 1759. t Essai d'une Iiist. Nat. de Couches deJa Terre, 1759. VOL. I. E |