SUPERSTITIONS. 23 



St. Augustin and by Tertullian, who adduce them in proof 

 of the deluge. 



The knowledge of the subject possessed by the ancients, 

 of whatever value or interest it may have been, was entirely 

 lost during the benighted ages which succeeded, when the 

 darkest ignorance prevailed respecting our earth, and the 

 monuments of its physical history were associated with 

 tales of the grossest and wildest nature. 



It may, perhaps, be permitted in a work such as the 

 present, devoted to the use of the student, to enumerate a 

 few of the legends which referred the phenomena of nature 

 to the superstition of the times. There is, in fact, scarcely 

 a single fossil object which is not in some way mixed up 

 with absurdities of this kind. Thus Pliny relates, that the 

 tubular pointed shell dentalium was supposed, if used as a 

 toothpick, to afford an infallible remedy for the toothache. 

 The ammonite shells were believed to be so many petrified 

 snakes, and the history and mystery of their fate was con- 

 ceived to be that, as they abounded in the vicinity of Whitby 

 in Yorkshire, near the abode of St. Hilda, and constituted a 

 very considerable annoyance, the inhabitants requested the 

 saint to use her eiforts that the nuisance might be abated 

 and the snakes destroyed, with which prayer the lady gra- 

 ciously complied, by first praying their heads off, and then 

 praying them into stone! The legend is recorded in the 

 poetry of Scott : 



" And how the nuns of Whitby told, 

 How of countless snakes, each one 

 Was changed into a coil of stone 

 When holy Hilda prayed, 

 Themselves within their sacred bound, 

 Their stony folds had often found." 



MARMION, Canto n. 



To so late a period did this superstition prevail, that the 

 author of a modern scientific work,* relates the instance of 

 a dealer, who having been requested by his customers to 

 supply them with some of the creatures which had escaped 

 decapitation, contrived to manufacture some heads of 

 plaster of Paris, and affix them to the specimens ; and thus 



* Sowcrby, Mineral Conchology, v. ii. p. y. 



