While these men were at work in Scotland, by a curious irony of fate one of Werner’s most distinguished pupils returned to Edinburgh, and in 1804 was appointed to the Chair of Natural History in the University there. Robert Jameson, like the other disciples of the Saxon teacher, was fired with zeal to spread the doctrines of his master, and as these doctrines were diametrically opposed to those of Hutton, there began a lively controversy which for a number of years had its chief battlefield in the Scottish metropolis. Werner claimed that by far the most important part in the history of the earth had been taken by water. His system was accordingly known as the Neptunist. It is difficult now to realise the fierceness of this warfare. The rocks round Edinburgh were appealed to with equal confidence by both sides, and many a lively discussion arose upon them. After a good many years, however, Jameson came to see that his master’s theory offered but a partial explanation of the phenomena of nature, and that essentially the Vulcanists were right. He publicly recanted his early opinions, and the defection of their leading protagonist led to the extinction of the Scottish Neptunists. With the dying out of the fires of controversy, a kind of languor seems to have settled down upon the progress of geological science in Scotland. There was no longer an active resident school of geologists, and though many Scotsmen had acquired renown as geologists, it was mainly by work in other countries, rather than in their own. In an address which he gave to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1862, James David Forbes expressed himself as follows: ‘It is a fact which admits of no doubt, that the Scottish Geological School, which once made Edinburgh famous, especially when the Vulcanist and Neptunian war raged simultaneously in the hall of this Society and in the class-rooms of the University, may almost be said to have been transported bodily to Burlington House [London]. Roderick Murchison, Charles Lyell, Leonard Horner, are Scottish names, and the bearers of them are Scottish in everything save residence.... Our younger men are drafted off as soon as their acquirements become known.... Of all the changes which have befallen Scottish science during the last half-century, that which I most deeply deplore, and at the same time wonder at, is the progressive decay of our once illustrious Geological School. Centralisation may account for it in part, but not entirely.’[38]