In both departments English thinkers had led the way, but if the impulse to such investigations came from without, the work done in France in every branch of scientific research during the eighteenth century was excelled by no other nation, and England alone could assert any claim to results of equal importance.

The researches of Coulomb in electricity, of Buffon in geology, of Lavoisier in chemistry, of Daubenton in comparative anatomy, carried still farther by their illustrious successors towards the close of the century, did much to establish conceptions of the universe and its laws upon a scientific basis." And not only did Rousseau make botany fashionable, but Goldsmith wrote from Paris in 1755: "I have seen as bright a circle of beauty at the chemical lectures of Rouelle as gracing the court of Versailles." Petit lectured on astronomy to crowded houses, and among his listeners were gentlemen and ladies of fashion, as well as professional students.[68] The popularizers of science during this period were Voltaire, Montesquieu, Alembert, Diderot, and other encyclopaedists.
Here should be mentioned one of Buffon's contemporaries and countrymen; one who was the first true field geologist, an observer rather than a compiler or theorist.

This was Jean E.Guettard (1715-1786).

He published, says Sir Archibald Geikie, in his valuable work, _The Founders of Geology_, about two hundred papers on a wide range of scientific subjects, besides half a dozen quarto volumes of his observations, together with many excellent plates.

Geikie also states that he is undoubtedly entitled to rank among the first great pioneers of modern geology.