Its arbitrary methods, its pompous language, altogether seemed to render it foreign to the other sciences, and, indeed, the professional savants for a long time cast it out of the circle of their studies." Their views, often premature, composed of half-truths, were mingled with glaring errors and fantastic misconceptions, but were none the less germinal.

Leibnitz was the first to propose the nebular hypothesis, which was more fully elaborated by Kant and Laplace.

Buffon, influenced by the writing of Leibnitz, in his _Theorie de la Terre_, published in 1749, adopted his notion of an original volcanic nucleus and a universal ocean, the latter as he thought leaving the land dry by draining into subterranean caverns.

He also dimly saw, or gathered from his reading, that the mountains and valleys were due to secondary causes; that fossiliferous strata had been deposited by ocean currents, and that rivers had transported materials from the highlands to the lowlands.

He also states that many of the fossil shells which occur in Europe do not live in the adjacent seas, and that there are remains of fishes and of plants not now living in Europe, and which are either extinct or live in more southern climates, and others in tropical seas.