446 Progress of Geology, 



There were men, even long prior to the time of which we 

 speak, who appear to have had some gUmpses of geological 

 truth. One of these, George Owen, of Pembrokeshire, before 

 the close of the sixteenth century, in describing the coal dis- 

 trict of South Wales, shows that he was aware that the mine- 

 ral masses were not confusedly assembled within its area, but 

 extended in a certain uniform arrangement. The striking 

 features presented by a coal field like that of South Wales, 

 and the observation necessarily exercised in tracing the direc- 

 tion of its principal mineral beds, for practical purposes, pro- 

 bably led to an examination of the whole. It is in such 

 situations, and under such circumstances, that the earliest 

 geological investigations would originate. The facts, however, 

 which resulted from this survey, were unavailing to the inter- 

 ests of the science, as his manuscript remained unpublished 

 until a few years ago. 



About the commencement of the eighteenth century, some 

 geological descriptions of portions of Bedfordshire, Kent, and 

 Somersetshire, appeared in the Philosophical Transactions. 

 These are to be regarded rather as rough sketches of uncon- 

 nected districts, than as parts of a systematic well defined 

 arrangement. It was a point then undecided, " whether the 

 stones we find in the form of shellfish be lapides sui generis^ 

 naturally produced by some extraordinary plastic virtue^ latent 

 in the earth, in quarries where they are found, or whether they 

 rather owe their form and figure to the shells of the fishes 

 they represent." {Dr. Plot, in 1677.) 



In favour of the former of these alternatives, appear the 

 names of Plot, Ray, Lister, and other eminent naturalists, and 

 it obtained advocates as late as the year 1752, the fossil re- 



75,000 years in cooling to its present temperature, and that, in 98,000 

 years more, productive nature must be finally extinguished. 



Woodward considered there was a temporary dissolution of the ele- 

 ments of the globe, during which period the extraneous fossils became in- 

 corporated with the general mass. 



De Luc, DolomieUy and, finally. Baron Cuvier, unite in the opinion, that 

 the phenomena exhibited by the earth, particularly the alternate deposits of 

 terrestrial and marine productions, can only be satisfactorily accounted for 

 by a series of revolutions similar to the deluge. 



Among the singular views entertained by men of genius, in the infancy of 

 the science, are those of Whiston, " who fancied that the earth was created 

 from the atmosphere of one comet, and deluged by the tail of another ;" 

 and that, for their sins, the antediluvian population were drowned j " except 

 the fishes, whose passions were less violent." 



A French geologist conceived that the sea covered the earth for a vast 

 period; that all aiiiiniils v. ere originally inhabitants of the water; that their 

 habits gradually changed on the retiring of the waves, and " that man him- 

 self began his career as a fish !" 



