874 M. Studer on some Phenomena of 



racteriso the intellectual habits of Italy as produced by hor 

 religious condition, — certainly it would ill become any student 

 of the history of science to speak slightingly of that country, 

 always the mother of the sciences, always ready to catch the 

 dawn and hail the rising of any new light of knowledge. But 

 I think our admiration of this activity and acuteness of mind 

 is by no means inconsistent with the opinion, that new truths 

 were promulgated more boldly beyond the Alps, and that the 

 Bubtilty of the Italian intellect loved to insinuate what the 

 rough German bluntly asserted. Of the decent duplicity with 

 which forbidden opinions were handled, the reviewer himself 

 gives us instances, when he boasts of the liberality with which 

 Copernican professors were placed in important stations by the 

 ecclesiastical authorities, soon after the doctrine of the motion 

 of the earth had been declared by the same authorities con- 

 trary to Scripture. And in the same spirit is the process of 

 demanding from Galileo a public and official recantation cf 

 opinions, which he had repeatedly been told by his ecclesiasti- 

 cal superiors he might hold as much as he pleased. I think 

 it is easy to believe that, among persons so little careful to re- 

 concile public profession with private conviction, official deco- 

 rum was all that was demanded. When Galileo had made his 

 renunciation of the earth's motion on his knees, he rose and 

 said, as we are told, E pur si muove — '' and yet it does move.'' 

 This is sometimes represented as the heroic soliloquy of a mind 

 cherishing its conviction of the truth, in spite of persecution ; 

 I think we may more naturally conceive it uttered as a play- 

 ful epigram in the ear of a cardinal's secretary, with a full 

 knowledge that it would bo immediately repeated to his mas- 

 ter. 



On some Phenomena of the Diluvian Epoch, By M. Studer. 



The members of the Geological Society (of France) who 

 were present at the meeting at Porrentruy, will doubtless re- 

 collect the calcareous rocks of Neuveville, polished and marked 

 with furrows and striae, on which M. Agassiz has partly founded 



