508 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



lowing year, Augustino Scilla, a Sicilian painter, published a Latin 

 epistle, De Corporibus Marinis Lapidescentibus, illustrated by good 

 engravings of fossil-shells, teeth, and corals. 4 After another interval 

 of speculative controversy, we come to Antonio Vallisneri, whose let- 

 ters, De 1 Corpi Marini che sit 1 Monti si trovano, appeared at Venice 

 in 1721. In these letters he describes the fossils of Monte Bolca, and 

 attempts to trace the extent of the marine deposits of Italy, 5 and to 

 distinguish the most important of the fossils. Similar descriptions 

 and figures were published with reference to our own country at a 

 later period. In 1766, Brander's Fossilia Hantoniensia, or Hamp- 

 shire Fossils, appeared ; containing excellent figures of fossil shells 

 from a part of the south coast of England ; and similar works came 

 forth in other parts of Europe. 



However exact might be the descriptions and figures thus produced, 

 they could not give such complete information as the objects them- 

 selves, collected and permanently preserved in museums. Vallisneri 

 says, 9 that having begun to collect fossils for the purpose of forming a 

 grobto, he selected the best, and preserved them " as a noble diversion 

 for the more curious." The museum of Calceolarius at Verona con- 

 tained a celebrated collection of such remains. A copious description 

 of it appeared in 1622. Such collections had been made from an ear- 

 lier period, and catalogues of them published. Thus Gessner's work, 

 De Rerum Fossilium, Lapidum et Gemmarum Figuris (1565), con- 

 tains a catalogue of the cabinet of petrifactions collected by John 

 Kentman ; many catalogues of the same kind appeared in the seven- 

 teenth century. 7 Lhwyd's Lythophylaccii Britannid Iconograpliia^ 

 published at Oxford in 1669, and exhibiting a very ample catalogue 

 of English Fossils contained in the Ashmolean Museum, may be no- 

 ticed as one of these. 



One of the most remarkable occurrences in the progress of descrip- 

 tive geology in England, was the formation of a geological museum 

 by William Woodward as early as 1695. This collection, formed 

 with great labor, systematically arranged, and carefully catalogued, he 

 bequeathed to the University of Cambridge ; foundiig and endowing 



4 Augustine Scilla's original drawings of fossil shells, teetn, and corals, from 

 which the engravings mentioned in the text were executed, as well as the 

 natural objects from which the drawings were made, were bought by Wood 

 ward, and are now in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge. 



5 p. 20. " p. 1. T Parkinson, Organic Remains, vol. i. p. 2a 



