PREFACE. vil 
Messina possess a considerable number. He is mentioned in 
many places in the works of Boccone the great naturalist with 
whom he travelled in Sicily. Scilla published in 1670 a book! 
the object of which was to prove by direct comparison, that 
fossils were not, as many held in those days, merely accidental 
forms or freaks of nature, but really the remains of organisms 
which had lived, died, and been buried in the mud and sand. 
With a view to proving this, he collected fossil and recent 
shells, bones, etc., and made excellent pencil sketches of some 
of the specimens in his collection, from which the figures 
in his work were drawn. The collection itself was acquired 
by Dre Woodward, and the University now possesses, not only 
the very specimens upon which Scilla based his observations, 
but also the original drawings which he made for the en- 
graver. Dr Woodward highly prized these drawings for he 
wrote on the fly leaf of the copy of the work with which they 
were bound up 
“Liber ingentis Pretii quippe qui exhibet Archetypas Fossilium 
Imagines, ipsius Augustini Scille, preeclari Pictoris, primo 
Messane, exinde Rome, insigni Penicillo delineatas.” 
This book, with the original drawings, I found behind a case 
in the Woodwardian Museum, its very existence having been 
previously unknown. 
Our own countryman Lister did not share the views of the 
Sicilian, and in 1688 published a work containing an article 
‘De Conchitis sive Lapidibus qui quandam similitudinem cum 
conchis marinis habeant. We have the original fine specimen 
of Productus giganteus, which he looked upon as only a piece of 
stone having an accidental resemblance to a marine shell. 
In the works of Dr Woodward very few fossils are figured, 
though many are described, and points of interest and of 
controversy in his time are referred to and illustrated by the 
specimens in his cabinets. For example, I remember the late 
1 La Vana speculazione disingannata dal senso, etc., Naples 1670. A Latin 
translation was published in Rome in 1747, and later editions in 1752 and 1759. 
