174 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY FROM 1780 TO 1835 1819, making some use of Smith’s results But in 1831 Smith was dubbed the ‘Father of English Geology’ by Adam Sedgwick (see Famous Geologists: Sedgwick) Apart from his map (and sections), Smith should be recognized for his practical and economic contributions On the basis of his biostratigraphic knowledge, he knew where coal might or might not be expected to be found and could advise entrepreneurs accordingly He was not much interested in why the rocks and fossils were distributed as they were or how old they were Smith was only one of the many practical men who contributed to the emergence of geology, but most of them left few historical traces and are little known There were also skilled artisan fossil collectors, the best known of whom was Mary Anning working on the south coast of England, who extracted specimens of ichthyosaurs and lesser fossils for sale to connoisseurs and museums Neptunism In Germany, lithostratigraphy was chiefly deployed during the late eighteenth century, according to the system of Abraham Werner, which was taught at the Freiberg Mining Academy in Saxony It postulated the existence of a standard ‘formation sequence’ of rocks: Primitive rocks (especially granite); Transition rocks (schists, greywackes, etc.); Floă etz (layered) rocks; Basalt; and Alluvial deposits His observational work was chiefly undertaken in Saxony and Silesia, and through the influence of his many distinguished pupils this area of Europe came to be regarded as an exemplar (paradigm) for studies further afield Werner was a gifted mineralogist and teacher, but his lithostratigraphic theory was based on the misconception that vast amounts of rock could formerly have been dissolved in a hypothetical universal ocean He thus denied the igneous origin of rocks like granite or basalt, and because basalt caps were found overlying sand beds on hills near Freiberg he imagined that basalt could have been deposited from water (an idea perhaps encouraged by its frequent columnar jointing) This meant that the supposed mineral-bearing ocean would have had to have risen to deposit the hilltop basalts So the theory of a falling universal ocean was implausible, both chemically and physically Nevertheless, Werner’s mineralogical exactitude and lithostratigraphy were appealing and influential But already in the eighteenth century visitors to central France such as Jean-E´ tienne Guettard had recognized the existence there of former volcanoes, and their associated basalts were interpreted as igneous products by Nicholas Desmarest, who deduced the historic sequence of lava flows in the area, the older ones being substantially eroded while the younger ones were fresh and had run down previously formed valleys Pupils of Werner such as Leopold von Buch started off their careers as Neptunists, but turned against their master’s ideas when they reached the Auvergne From about 1820, there were few who still advocated Neptunism, but later in the nineteenth century there was renewed interest in the role of water in the formation of rocks, and again in the migmatist/magmatist debates of the twentieth century: Werner’s ideas had intellectual descendants In Edinburgh, they had a strong advocate in the Professor of Natural History, Robert Jameson Vulcanism Vulcanism (to be distinguished from the modern term volcanism) was the sobriquet for the theory that ascribed primacy to the agency of heat in geological processes Such ideas were strongly argued by the Scottish Enlightenment geologist, James Hutton As a farmer, Hutton saw soil being washed into the sea, and he supposed that if weathering and erosion continued indefinitely all the fertile land would be lost, and what he regarded as a world ‘devised in wisdom’ for human habitation would eventually be destroyed (he took a very long view of geological history) He therefore contemplated a cyclic theory that would allow for replenishment of soil In Werner’s theory, volcanoes were ‘weakly’ explained by the combustion of underground coal deposits But Hutton advocated a great central source of heat, in a way similar to Kircher’s ‘Pyrophylaciorum’ (see History of Geology Up To 1780), and analogous to the fires of the machines of the Industrial Revolution, which made the wheels of industry turn Hutton envisaged the Earth as a kind of great machine After his death, his ‘Plutonist’ theory achieved support from the experimental work of Sir James Hall, and from measurements of temperature gradients within mines, such as those made by Louis Cordier, which showed increased temperatures with depth supporting the idea of the Earth having a hot interior The Vulcanist–Neptunist Dispute This controversy was prosecuted with greatest vigour in Edinburgh, between supporters of Hutton and Jameson From today’s perspective, it would seem that Vulcanism would be the easy winner, but the results of Hall’s attempted experimental vindication of Hutton’s doctrine were somewhat ambiguous When granite was fused and slowly cooled the product did not look exactly like the starting material