Dr. Fitton's Notes on the History of English Geology. 1 53 



position of the bodies in question : For, as such an event must 

 evidently have been too transitory to have produced appear- 

 ances observable at great depths from the surface, and within 

 the substance of strata in which no marks of disturbance were 

 to be detected, there was no resource but in denying that the 

 fossils of the solid beds had ever been endowed with life. The 

 obstinacy with which the doctrine was adheied to, is no less 

 surprising. Palissy indeed is praised by Fontenelle in 1 720, 

 for having overthrown it more than a century before * ; yet in 

 the year 1 708, a book was published by Scheuchzer, under 

 the title of Piscium Qtcerelce ct Vindicicc, where the fishes, 

 entombed in stony substances, are represented as deploring, 

 in very pathetic language, the indignity under which they suf- 

 fer, in being degraded from the animal kingdom to the rank 

 of mere inorganic matter. This remonstrance, however, does 

 not seem to have been eiFectual ; for Woodward, in 1723, still 

 thought it necessary to reason against the doctrine we have 

 mentioned: and afterwards, so late as 1752, M. Bertrand, a 

 Swiss clergyman, made a last effort in its favour, contending 

 that fossils are nothing more than links in the progressive 

 series by which unorganized matter is connected with the ani- 

 mated world ; or perhaps the unfinished materials (' injieriy' 

 as Dr. Plot had long before expressed it,) out of which the 

 Creator might have formed, and in part did forai, the existing 

 races of similar beings. 



In the Philosophical Transactions for 1684, there is pub- 

 lished, ' An ingenious proposal for a new sort of maps of 

 ' countries; together with tables of sands and clays, such as are 

 ' chiefly found in the north parts of England, by the learned 

 ' Maktin Lister, M.D.'t.— ' We shall then,' the author be- 



• animal. My reason is, that quarries of different stone yield us quite 



* different sorts of xpecies of sheik, not only from one another, — but I dare 



* boldly say, from any thing in nature besides, that either the land, or salt or 

 'fresh water doth yield us. 'Tis true that I have picked out of one quarry 



• of Wansford very near resemblances of Murices, &c. ; and yet I am nut con- 

 ' vinced that I did ever meet with any of these species of f hells anywhere else 

 ' but in their respective quarries: whence I conclude them to be Lapides sui 

 ' generis, and that they were not cast in any animal mould, whose species or 

 ' race is yet to be found in being at the present day J '—Phil. Trans.— Low- 

 thorp's Abridgement, vol. ii. p. 425.J 



• Encycl. Method, torn. i. p. 406. — Bernard Palissy was born between 

 1514 ana 1520. He delivered his opinions at Paris in 1575, in public lee- 

 lures of which he has given an entertaining; account in a treatise " Det 

 Pierres." His works were re[)ublished in 1777, by Fanjas St. Fond ; and 

 Fontenelle is there quoted (among a crowd of authors who commend him) 

 from IJHistoire de I' Academic, 17~0, p. 5. 



t Phil. Trans, vol. xiv. p. 7;i9, &c. In the title, this paper is stated to 

 have been 'Drawn up about 10 years since, and delivered to the Royal 

 'Society, March 12, 168.3.'— As Dr. Lister lived till 1712. this precision as 

 to dates seems to im|)ly that his priority had been questioned. 



Third Series. Vol. 1. No. 2. Aug. 1S32. X 



