224 "^HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In his great work, " De Re Metallica," published in 1546, he mentions 

 various fossil remains, and says they were produced by a certain ^^ ma- 

 teria /»^V^^^^^5," or fatty matter, set in fermentation by heat. Some 

 years later, Bauhin published a descriptive catalogue of the fossils he 

 had collected in the neighborhood of Boll, in Wurtemberg.* 



Andrew Mattioli, a distinguished botanist, adopted Agricola's no- 

 tion as to the origin of organized fossils, but admitted that shells and 

 bones might be turned into stone by being permeated by a " lapidify- 

 ing juice." Falloppio, the eminent professor of anatomy at Padua, 

 believed that fossil shells were generated by fermentation where they 

 were found ; and that the tusks of elephants, dug up near Apulia, 

 were merely earthy concretions. Mercati, in 1574, published figures 

 of the fossil shells preserved in the Museum of the Vatican, but ex- 

 pressed the opinion that they were only stones, and owed their peculiar 

 shapes to the heavenly bodies. Olivi, of Cremona, described the fossils 

 in the Museum at Verona, and considered them all " sports" of nature." 



Palissy, a French author, in 1580, opposed these views, and is said 

 to have been the first to assert in Paris that fossil shells and fishes had 

 once belonged to marine animals. Fabio Colonna aj^pears to have first 

 pointed out that some of the fossil shells found in Italy were marine 

 and some terrestrial. 



Another peculiar theory discussed in the sixteenth century deserves 

 mention. This was the vegetation theory, especially advocated by 

 Tournefort and Camerarius, both eminent as botanists. These writers 

 believed that the seeds of minerals and fossils were diffused through- 

 out the sea and the earth, and were developed into their peculiar forms 

 by the regular increment of their particles, similar to the formation 

 of crystals. "How could the Gormt Ammonis^'' Tournefort asked, 

 " which is constantly in the figure of a volute, be formed without a 

 seed containing the same structure in the small as in the larger forms ? 

 Who molded it so artfullj^, and where are the molds ? " The stalac- 

 tites which formed in caverns in various parts of tlie world were also 

 supposed to be proofs of this vegetative growth. 



Still another theory has been held at various times, and is not yet 

 entirely forgotten, namely : that the Creator made fossil animals and 

 plants just as they are found in the rocks, in pursuance of a plan be- 

 yond our comprehension. This theory has never prevailed among 

 those familiar with scientific facts, and hence needs here no further 

 consideration. 



An interest in fossil remains arose in England later than on the 

 Continent; but when attention was directed to them, the first opinions 

 as to their origin were not less fanciful and erroneous than those to 

 which we have already referred. Dr. Plot, in his " Natural History 

 of Oxfordshire," published in 1G77, considered the origin of fossil 



* " Historia novi et admirabilis Fontis Balneique BoUensis, in Ducatu Wirtembergico." 

 Montbeliard, 1508. 



