28 HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE. 



Among the earliest inquirers, Brocchi* informs us, there 

 are two, of whom letters and the arts may be justly proud. 

 Boccaccio, born at Certaldo, a small town of Tuscany, must 

 have been accustomed from his childhood to observe the 

 immense assemblage of fossil shells, of which the hills of that 

 region are composed. In his romance of " Filocopo " he 

 describes them with much emphasis, adducing them as proofs 

 of the sea having once covered the land. 



The celebrated painter LEONARDO DA VINCI, who united 

 the avocations of an architect and civil engineer with that of 

 an artist, and had thus become acquainted with the structure 

 of the earth, eagerly took part in inquiries of this nature : 

 an opinion having been expressed that these objects owed 

 their origin to the stars, he denounced it. as absurd, and 

 ridiculed the idea of such a cause being sufficient to produce 

 the occurrence of different petrifactions in the same spot, 

 as leaves, sea-weeds, and Crustacea. 



ERACASTORO, a celebrated physician and naturalist of 

 Verona, in 1517 took part in the two grand disputes then 

 prevailing. The first was, whether fossil shells belonged to 

 animals which had lived and multiplied on the spot where 

 these relics were found; a proposition, the affirmative of 

 which he strongly maintained. The second related to the 

 question whether these phenomena were caused by the 

 deluge, a notion which he as strongly opposed, contending 

 that the transient nature of the flood, and the fluviatile cha- 

 racter of its waters, were calculated merely to strew such 

 objects over the face of the earth, but were insufficient to 

 bury them in the strata of mountains, at the depths in which 

 they now lie entombed. Science, which had revived in Italy, 

 soon diffused itself in other regions ; and Germany, a country 

 abounding in mines which presented admirable facilities for 

 investigating the structure of the earth, produced philoso- 

 phers, whose ardour and genius contributeid in an important 

 degree to the advancement of philosophical knowledge. 



CONRAD GESSKER, born at Zurich, 1516, was one of the 

 most learned and gifted men of his time. He is usually 

 termed the Pliny of Germany ; and when we consider the 



* See his Introductory Discourse to the Study of Fossil Conchology in 

 Italy. 



