ABSTRACT
Benoit de Maillet was a French diplomatist whose interest in geology appears to have been prompted by contempt for human pretensions, which he confronted with the vision of a time when the Earth would dry up, and be burnt up by volcanic eruptions. Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch, who was Professor of Philosophy and Poetry at Jena, a keen geologist, and the author of a book on rocks, was persuaded to carry on the work of Knorr. In 1746, Guettard communicated to the Paris Academy of Sciences a Memoire et Carte Mineralogique, which may be described as the first attempt at a geological survey. In it he described the arrangement of rocks and minerals in central and northern France, in the light of the observations which he had made in those parts. John Strachey studied the various types of geological formations, and their sequence, in the south-west of England.
