THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



of the variation of the earth's surface and the nature 

 of fossils down to the nineteenth century.^ 



We have only two references on the subject from 

 philosophers before Aristotle. It is recorded that An- 

 aximander and Diogenes of Apollonia believed that 

 the relative proportions of ocean and land are not 

 constant and that the sea is gradually drying up by 

 evaporation.^ A more detailed statement by Xenopha- 

 nes is preserved : "And Xenophanes believes that once 

 the earth was mingled with the sea, but in the course 

 of time it became freed from moisture ; and his proofs 

 are such as these : that shells are found in the midst 

 of the land and among the mountains, that in the 

 quarries of Syracuse the imprints of a fish and of seals 

 had been found, and in Paros the imprint of an an- 

 chovy fish at some depth in the stone, and in Melite 

 shallow impressions of all sorts of sea products. He 

 says that these imprints were made when everything 

 long ago was covered with mud, and then the imprint 

 dried in the mud."^ Empedocles, whom we might 

 have expected to note such remains, is silent on the 

 subject. We must not impart to his idea that imper- 

 fect monsters, the fictitious creatures of mythology, 

 had been created before nature knew how to fashion 



3 The material for this survey of geology and palaeontology down 

 to the remarkable speculations of da Vinci on the nature and cause 

 of fossils is taken principally from the investigations of Professor 

 Duhem undertaken in connection with his monograph Les Etudes 

 sur Leonard de Vinci, 2 vols. Librairie A. Hermann. 

 * Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece, p. 12. 

 5 Ibid., p. 83. 



C 122 3 



