Wernerian Natural History Society

The Society was named after Abraham Gottlob Werner, a German geologist who was a creator of Neptunism, a theory of superposition based on a receding primordial ocean that had deposited all the rocks in the crust.

[1] At this time all rocks, including basalt, and crystalline substances were thought by some to be precipitated from solution.

[2] Robert Jameson, Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh, was the founder and life president of the Society.

In 1800, he spent a year at the mining academy in Freiberg, Saxony, where he studied under Werner.

More than twelve of Jameson's papers on geology and mineralogy were published in these volumes, and he also contributed some on zoology and botany.