62 JEROME CARDAN. 



Palissy directly alludes, we find it stated, that " the earth 

 is entirely stable, round and in the middle of the world : 

 these things are demonstrated by mathematics. For the 

 whole earth is no more able to stir from its place than the 

 heavens are able to stand still 1 ." And of mountains, he 

 says, " their origin is threefold. Either the earth swells, 

 being agitated by frequent movements, and gives birth to 

 mountains as to pimples rising from a body, which is the 

 case with a mountain called La Nova, near the lake 

 Averno r in the Terra di Lavoro ; or their soil is heaped 

 up by the winds, which is often the case in Africa ; or, 

 what is most natural and common, they are the stones left 

 after the material of the earth has been washed away by 

 running water, for the water of a stream descends into the 

 valley, and the stony mountain itself rises from the valley, 

 whence it happens that all mountains are more or less 

 composed of stones. Their height above the surrounding 

 soil is because the fields are daily eaten down by the rains, 

 and the earth itself decays ; but stones, besides that they 

 do not decay, also for the most part grow, as we shall show 

 hereafter 2 ." The notion that earth taken from stone leaves 

 mountain, that a Salisbury Plain would be a Mount 

 Salisbury, if all the soil were taken out of it, and only the 



1 De Subtil. Lib. ii. p. 60. " Terra toto stabilis est, rotunda atque 

 medio mundi: hsec autem a mathematicis demonstrantur. Nee enim 

 plus tota terra loco mover! potest, quam ccelurn quiescere." 



2 Ibid. p. 59. 



