440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Of this period, when theological substitutes for science were carry- 

 ing all before them, there still exists a monument commemorating at 

 the same time a farce and a tragedy. This is the work of Johann 

 Beringer, professor in the University of Wiirzburg and private phy- 

 sician to the Prince-Bishop — the treatise bearing the title "Litho- 

 graph,iae Wirceburgensis specimen primum," " illustrated with the mar- 

 velous likenesses of two hundred figured or rather insectiform stones." 

 Beringer, for the greater glory of God, had previously committed 

 himself so completely to the theory that fossils are simply " stones of 

 a peculiar sort, hidden by the Author of Nature for his own pleasure," * 

 that some of his students determined to give his faith in that pious 

 doctrine a thorough trial. They therefore buried in a place where he 

 was wont to search for specimens a store of sham fossils in baked 

 clay — of their own manufacture — including not only plants, reptiles, 

 and fishes of every sort that their knowledge or imagination could sug- 

 gest, but even Hebrew and Syriac inscriptions, one of them the name 

 of the Almighty. The joy of the pious professor on unearthing these 

 proofs of the immediate agency of the finger of God in creating fossils 

 knew no bounds. At great cost he prepared this book, whose twenty- 

 two elaborate plates of facsimiles were forever to settle the question 

 in favor of theology and against science. Prefixed to the work was 

 an allegorical title-page, wherein not only the glory of his own sover- 

 eign, but that of heaven itself, was pictured as based upon a pyramid 

 of these miraculous fossils. So robust was his faith that not even a 

 premature exposure of the fraud could dissuade him from its publica- 

 tion. Dismissing in one contemptuous chapter this exposure as the 

 slander of his rivals, he appealed to the learned world. But the shout 

 of laughter that welcomed the work soon convinced even its author. 

 In vain did he try to suppress it ; and, according to tradition, having 

 wasted his fortune in vain attempts to buy up all the copies of it, and, 

 being taunted by the rivals Avhom he had thought to overwhelm, he 

 died of chagrin. Even death did not end his misfortunes. The copies of 

 the first edition having been sold by a graceless descendant to a Leip- 

 sic bookseller, a second edition was brought out under a new title, 

 and this, too, is now much sought as a precious memorial of human 

 folly.f 



But even this discomfiture did not end the idea which had caused 

 it, for, although some latitude was allowed among the various theo- 

 logico-scientific explanations, it was still held meritorious to believe that 

 all fossils were placed in the strata on one of the creative days by the 



* See Ecringcr's " Lithographiae," etc., p. 91. 



f See Cams, " Geschichte der Zoologic," Munich, 18'72, p. 46Y, note, and Reusch, " Bibel 

 und Natur," p. 197. A list of the authorities upon this episode, with the text of one of 

 the epigrams circulated at poor Beringer's expense, is given by Dr. Reuss in the " Serapeum " 

 for 1852, p. 203. The book itself (the original impression) is in the White Library at 

 Cornell University. For Beringer himself, sec especially the encyclopaedia of Ersch and 

 Gruber, and the " Allg. deutsche Biographic." 



