Berlin, in 1756, first formally stated that there
was some regular succession in the strata, his observations being based
on profiles of the Hartz and the Erzgebirge. He proposed the names
Zechstein, Kupferschiefer, rothes Todtliegendes, which still linger in
German treatises. G. C. Fuchsel (1762) wrote on the stratigraphy of the
coal measures, the Permian and the later systems in Thuringia. (Zittel.)

[74] James Hutton was born at Edinburgh, June 3, 1726, where he died
March 26, 1797.

[75] Quoted from Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, eighth edit., p. 17.

[76] _Bulletin Societe Imp. des Naturalistes De Moscou_, xlii. (1869),
pt. 1. p. 4, quoted from Geikie's _Geology_, p. 276, footnote.

[77] Suess also, in his _Anlitz_ etc., substitutes for the folding of
the earth's crust by tangential pressure the subsidence by gravity of
portions of the crust, their falling in obliging the sea to follow.
Suess also explains the later transgressions of the sea by the
progressive accumulation of sediments which raise the level of the sea
by their deposition at its bottom. Thus he believes that the true factor
in the deformation of the globe is vertical descent, and not, as Neumayr
had previously thought, the folding of the crust.

[78] Bruguiere (1750-1799), a conchologist of great merit. His
descriptions of new species were clear and precise. In his paper on the
coal mines of the mountains of Cevennes (Choix de Memoires d'Hist. Nat.,
1792) he made the first careful study of the coal formation in the
Cevennes, including its beds of coal, sandstone, and shale. A. de
Jussieu had previously supposed that the immense deposits of coal were
due to sudden cataclysms or to one of the great revolutions of the earth
during which the seas of the East or West Indies, having been driven as
far as into Europe, had deposited on its soil all these exotic plants to
be found there, after having torn them up on their way.

But Bruguiere, who is to be reckoned among the early uniformitarians,
says that "the capacity for observation is now too well-informed to be
contented with such a theory," and he explains the formation of coal
deposits in the following essentially modern way:

"The stores of coal, although formed of vegetable substances, owe their
origin to the sea. It is when the places where we now find them were
covered by its waters that these prodigious masses of vegetable
substances were gathered there, and this operation of nature, whi