OCR Text |
Show 'I I I I 26 NATURE OF ORGANIZED FOSSILS• in the soil.:X• In the same spirit, Mercati, who published, in 1574, faithful figures of the fossil shells. preserved by Pope Sextus V. in the Museum of the VatiCan, expressed an opinion that they ~ere mere stone~, which had assumed their peculiar configuratiOn from the mfluence o~ the heavenl! bodies · and Olivi of Cremona, who descnbed the fosstl remain~ of a rich Museum at Verona, was satisfied with considering them mere " sports of nature., The title of a work of Cardano's, published in 155~, " De Subtilitate," (corresponding to what would now be called, Transcendental Philosophy,) would lead us to expect in the chapter· on minerals, many fat·-fetched theories characteristic of that age ; but, when treating of petrified shells, he decided that they clearly indicated the former sojourn of the sea upon the mountainst. Some of the fanciful notions of those times were deemed less unreasonable, as being somewhat in harmony with the Aristotelian theory of spontaneous generation, then taught in all the schools. For men who had been instructed in early youth, that a large proportion of living animals and plants were formed from the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or had sprung from the corruption of organic matter, might easily persuade themselves, that organic shapes, often imperfectly preserved in the interior of solid rocks, owed their existence to causes equally obscure and mysterious. But there were not wanting some, who at the close of this century expressed more sound and sober opinions. Cesalpino, a celebrated botanist, conceived that fossil shells had been left on the land by the retiring sea, and had concreted into stone during the consolidation of the soil t ; and in the following year (1597), Simeone Majoli 9 went still further, and, coinciding for the most part with the views of Cesalpino, suggested that th<t shells and submarine matter of the Veronese, and other districts, might have been cast up, upon the ]and, by volcanic explosions, like those which gave rise, in 1588, to • De Fossilib. p. 109 and 176, t Brocchi, Con. Foss. Subap. Disc. sui Prog. vol. i. p. 5. ~ De Metallicis. 9 Dies Caniculares. PALIS$Y-STENO, 27 Monte Nuovo, near Puzzuoli.-This hint was the first imperfect attempt to connect the position of fossil shells with the agency of volcanoes, a system afterwards more fully developed by Hooke, Lazzoro Moro, Hutton, and other writers. Two years afte~wards, Imperati advocated the animal origin of fossilized shells, yet admitted that stones could vegetate by force of ''an internal principle;" and, as evidence of this, he referred to , the teeth of fish, and spines of echini found petrified*. Palissy, a French writer on " the Origin of Springs from Rain-water" and of other scientific works, undertook, in 1580, to combat the notions of many of his contemporaries in Italy, that petrified shells had all been deposited by the universal deluge. " He was the first," said Fontenelle, when, in the French Academy, he pronounced his eulogy more than fifty years afterwards, " who dared assert" in Paris, that fossil remains of testacea and fish had once belonged to marine animals. To enumerate the multitude of Italian writers, who advanced various hypotheses, all equally fantastical, in the early part of the seventeenth century, would be unprofitably tedious, but Fabio Colonna deserves to be distinguished ; for, although he gave way to the dogma, that all fossil remains were to be referred to the Noachian deluge, he resisted tne absurd theory of Stelluti, who taught that fossil wood and ammonites were mere clay, altered into such forms by sulphureous waters and subterranean heat ; and he pointed out the different states of shells buried in the strata, distinguishing between, first, the mere mould or impression ; secondly, the cast or nucleus ; and thirdly, the remains of the shell itself. He had also the merit of being the first to point out, that some of the fossils had belonged to marine, and some to terrestrial testaceat. But the most remarkable work of that period was published by Steno, a Dane, once professor of anatomy at Padua, and who afterwards resided many years at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The treatise bears the quaint title of" De Solido intra Solidum contento naturaliter, (1669,)" by which the author intended to express " On Gems, Crystals, and organic Petrifactions inclosed within solid Rocks." This work * Storia Naturale. t Osserv, sugU Animali aquat. e terrcst. 1626. |