A no less decided inclination was shown to persist in the use of the term "transition," after it had been proved to be almost as faulty in its original application as that of floetz. The name of transition, as already stated, was first given by Werner, to designate a mineral character, intermediate between the highly crystalline or metamorphic state and that of an ordinary fossiliferous rock. But the term acquired also from the first a chronological import, because it had been appropriated to sedimentary formations, which, in the Hartz and other parts of Germany, were more ancient than the oldest of the secondary series, and were characterized by peculiar fossil zoophytes and shells. When, therefore, geologists found in other districts stratified rocks occupying the same position, and inclosing similar fossils, they gave to them also the name of _transition_, according to rules which will be explained in the next chapter; yet, in many cases, such rocks were found not to exhibit the same mineral texture which Werner had called transition. On the contrary, many of them were not more crystalline than different members of the secondary class; while, on the other hand, these last were sometimes found to assume a semi-crystalline and almost metamorphic aspect, and thus, on lithological grounds, to deserve equally the name of transition. So remarkably was this the case in the Swiss Alps, that certain rocks, which had for years been regarded by some of the most skilful disciples of Werner to be transition, were at last acknowledged, when their relative position and fossils were better understood, to belong to the newest of the secondary groups; nay, some of them have actually been discovered to be members of the lower tertiary series! If, under such circumstances, the name of transition was retained, it is clear that it ought to have been applied without reference to the age of strata, and simply as expressive of a mineral peculiarity. The continued appropriation of the term to formations of a given date, induced geologists to go on believing that the ancient strata so designated bore a less resemblance to the secondary than is really the case, and to imagine that these last never pass, as they frequently do, into metamorphic rocks. The poet Waller, when lamenting over the antiquated style of Chaucer, complains that-- We write in sand, our language grows, And, like the tide, our work o'erflows. But the reverse is true in geology; for here it is our work which continually outgrows the language. The tide of observation advances with such speed that improvements in theory outrun the changes of nomenclature; and the attempt to inculcate new truths by words invented to express a different or opposite opinion, tends constantly, by the force of association, to perpetuate error; so that dogmas renounced by the reason still retain a strong hold upon the imagination.