126 Mr. Edward McCurdy [March 19, 



mysteriously in wonder-working coils through the landscape back- 

 grounds of his pictures. He traces the infinite shapes it assumes, 

 falling in violence of movement in spirals and eddies, circling like the 

 loop of a swallow's flight, something of the artist's sheer delight in 

 the creation of beauty of form mingling with the scientist's purpose 

 to wrest from this variety its underlying principle. Or again, 

 as engineer he harnesses its power, studying to divert its channels 

 either in menace of war or for purposes of commerce or irrigation. 



In considering a geological problem his method is entirely deduc- 

 tive. " Since," as he says, " things are far more ancient than letters," 

 he turns from authority to the testimony of things themselves. 

 " Why," he asks, " do we find the bones of great fishes and oysters 

 and corals and various other shells and sea-shells on the high 

 summits of mountains by the sea just as we find them in low seas ? " 



The fact that the cockles were living at the time when they 

 became embedded in the strata — this being evident from the shells 

 being found in a row in pairs, while in other places the dead are 

 found separated from their shells and all cast up together by the 

 waves— is cited as proof that water formerly covered parts of the 

 earth which are now far above the level of the sea, and that this 

 condition continued for a period of more than the forty days of the 

 Deluge, because, as the cockle travels along a furrow at the rate of 

 three or four braccia daily, it could not in forty days have proceeded 

 from the Adriatic to Monferrato in Lombardy, a distance of 250 

 miles. By an investigation of the cuttings formed by the Arno in the 

 successive strata of which the shells are found, he shows the gradual 

 changes in the crust of the earth, and following on the track of this 

 knowledge he essays the construction of the map of Italy in days re- 

 mote beyond record, but of which the earth remains a living witness. 



His special interest in botanical study may be traced back to the 

 earliest period of his artistic work. 



Vasari tells of a cartoon, intended for tapestry, of the sin of 

 Adam and Eve in Paradise, where was a meadow with innumerable 

 plants and animals " of which in truth one could say that for dili- 

 gence and truth to nature divine wit could not make the like." He 

 mentions a fig-tree as of special excellence for the foreshortening of 

 the leaves and the disposition of the branches, and also a palm in 

 which the roundness of the fan-like leaves was shown with marvellous 

 art. His description suggests minute attention to detail on the part 

 of the artist based upon a profound study of nature, and these are 

 the characteristics which find expression in Leonardo's many exquisite 

 studies of plants and flowers, and the treatment of the herbage in the 

 Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre. His study of botany was in 

 inception an integral part of his treatise on painting, botany being 

 as necessary as anatomy, in order that the painter might have the 

 requisite knowledge of form and structure. 



But here also the artist's power of observation of the yaried 



