100 PALEONTOLOGY, 



important questions in the natural sciences, 5'et tor many ages they had 

 been almost entirely overlooked by naturalists. Fossils, in fact, have 

 very' little about them to excite the interest of superficial observers. 

 Buried in the depths of the earth, without color, often mutilated and 

 even fragmentary, they do not captivate the eye as do the brilliant pro- 

 ductions of animated nature. But the most intense interest is avi^akened 

 in the inquiring mind, when it begins to reflect on the manner in which 

 the fossils have been deposited •, what is the mysterious agency which 

 has placed marine shell at a great distance from the sea, in the midst of 

 the hardest rock, and even on the summits of the highest mountains ? 

 and what was the character of the animals, whose fossilized remains attest 

 modes of e.vistence and forms so different from those which live at the 

 present time ^ Such reflections create a powerful interest ; for these 

 phenomenon are closely connected with tlie history of our globe. 



In the writings of the philosophers and naturalists of antiquity, we 

 find a few passages, which show that the most general facts of the his- 

 tory of fossils had not entirely escaped them. Plato and Pythagoras, 

 and especially Aristotle, Pliny and Seneca, make mention of them, and 

 even the imagination of some poets was kindled by them, for Ovid speaks 

 of marine fossils being found on the tops of mountains. 



But no naturalist of antiquity investigated fossils, and even to tlie 

 end of the fifteenth century of the christian era, we find the opinions of 

 men, on these phenomena, vague, crude, and erroneous. 



At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the discovery of numer- 

 ous fossils, drew the attention of some learned men, who tried to account 

 for their occurrence on the mountains and their distance from the sea. 

 But these facts were so difiicult of solution, and the presence of these 

 remains was considered so incompatible with phj^sical laws, that they 

 denied that these Jigured stones, as they were called, were the veritable 

 remains of animals, and they attributed their formation to the sports of 

 nature. Other learned men thought that the occult or mysterious plas- 

 tic power (nisus format ionis), to which spontaneous generation was at- 

 tributed in that age, could also create the forms of shells in stones. 

 Others (equally wise) thought that these fossils were the product of the 

 seed of the animal, drawn up by evaporation or carried away by cur- 

 rents. Tiiey supposed that the terrestrial animals, and especially the ma- 

 rine, deposited their germs, which, transported by the water in subterra- 

 nean conduits, were thus carried far into the interior of mountains. 

 These germs there found places favorable to tlieir developement ; in 

 their growtli they preserved the form of their parents, and imbibed the 

 substance of the rock where they had been deposited ! ! 



