Buffon seems to have been really the founder of the family in the modern form. He is credited with the sarcastic remark that "geologists must feel like the ancient Roman augurs who could not meet each other without laughing;" though in view of his fantastic scheme of seven "epochs," in which he endeavors to portray "the beginning, the past, and the future (_sic_) of our planet,"[6] one is reminded of the common symptom which manifests itself in thinking all the rest of the world crazy. The "Heroic Age of Geology" succeeded this period, and was characterized largely by a determination to discard speculation, and to seek to build up a true science of actual fact and truth. We have already seen from Spencer's remarks that A. G. Werner, who was, however, one of the leaders in Germany at this time, was very far from following true inductive methods. And the following language of Sir Arch. Geikie shows that in him the family characteristics were decidedly prominent: "But never in the history of science did a stranger hallucination arise than that of Werner and his school, when they supposed themselves to discard theory and build on a foundation of accurately-ascertained fact. Never was a system devised in which theory was more rampant; theory, too, unsupported by observation, and, as we now know, utterly erroneous. From beginning to end of Werner's method and its applications, assumptions were made for which there was no ground, and these assumptions were treated as demonstrable facts. =The very point to be proved was taken for granted=, and the geognosts, who boasted of their avoidance of speculation, were in reality among the most hopelessly speculative of all the generations that had tried to solve the problem of the theory of the earth."[7] In fact this author says that: "The Wernerians were as certain of the origin and sequence of the rocks as if they had been present at the formation of the earth's crust." (pp. 288-9.) Here we see the family characteristics very strongly developed. In speaking of Werner's five successive "suites" or onion-coats in which he wrapped his embryo world, Zittel complains: "Unfortunately, Werner's field observations were =limited to a small district=, the Erz mountains and the neighboring parts of Saxony and Bohemia. And his chronological scheme of formations was founded upon the mode of occurrence of the rocks within these narrow confines." (p. 59.)