LAMARCK’S WORK IN GEOLOGY gI 
“But, says Wyell\* “the clear and: philosophical 
views of Frascatero were disregarded, and the talent 
and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed 
for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of 
these two simple and preliminary questions: First, 
whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living 
creatures ; and, secondly, whether, if this be admitted, 
all the phenomena could not be explained by the 
deluge of Noah.” 
Previous to this the great artist, architect, engineer, 
and musician, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who, 
among other great works, planned and executed some 
navigable canals in Northern Italy, and who was an 
observer of rare penetration and judgment, saw how 
fossil shells were formed, saying that the mud of 
rivers had covered and penetrated into the interior of 
fossil shells at a time when these were still at the 
bottom of the sea near the coast.t 
That versatile and observing genius, Bernard 
Palissy, as early as 1580, in a book entitled The Orz- 
gin of Springs from Rain-water, and in other writings, 
criticized the notions of the time, especially of Italian 
writers, that petrified shells had all been left by the 
universal deluge. 
“It has happened,” said Fontenelle, in his eulogy 
on Palissy, delivered before the French Academy a 
century and a half later, “that a potter who knew 
neither Latin nor Greek dared, toward the end of the 
sixteenth century, to say in Paris, and in the pres- 
ence of all the doctors, that fossil shells were veritable 
shells deposited at some time by the sea in the places 
* Principles of Geology. 
t Lyell’s Principles of Geology, 8th edit., p. 22. 
