34 HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE. 



minute zoophytes and shells, he formed the most enlarged 

 views of nature, devoting his attention to the structure of 

 the earth, the action of water, the formation of mountains, 

 and the composition of rocks. It may be cited as his 

 highest eulogium, that he was too much in advance of his 

 contemporaries to be esteemed or appreciated by them. 

 His great work* was so coldly received by the public, 

 that he was about to commit to the flames the greater part 

 of the manuscript of the second volume, and actually con- 

 signed to the brazier the whole of the copperplates. But his 

 writings, scarcely appreciated at home, were prized and 

 studied abroad, in Germany by Fischer and by Moll, and 

 in France by Montfort; while his countryman, Professor 

 Eicca, called attention to his merits, and pronounced a 

 public eulogy on him some years after his decease. Brocchi 

 adds, that he is, even now, scarcely honoured in propor- 

 tion to his deserts, and in particular, that having been the 

 first to call attention to the occurrence, in various parts 

 of Italy, of fresh-water deposits among those of a marine 

 origin, and the first to point out the alternation of marine 

 and fresh-water strata in Xaris' basin, his admirable obser- 

 vations have been passed over in silence by later writers, to 

 whom, however, they could not have been unknown. 



The history of geological inquiry during the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries consisted chiefly of a series of contests 

 on the questions of the organic nature of fossil objects, and 

 their deposition by the deluge ; a compromise being usually 

 effected, naturalists conceding what they considered the 

 minor point, the universality and power of the flood, in 

 order to secure the more important admission, the animal 

 origin of fossil remains. Towards the close of this period, 

 Leibnitz, in his Protogcea, published those views of the 

 original incandescence of our planet, and its subsequent 

 refrigeration, which later inquiries have tended so largely to 

 confirm. Another distinguished mathematician of the same 

 era, Dr. Hooke, promulgated, in his writings, similarly just 

 and enlightened views of the organic nature of fossils, the 

 extinction of species, the former tropical climate of the 

 earth, the effects of volcanic action, subterranean and sub- 



* Testaceographia ac Zoophytographia parya et microscopia, 3 vpls. 

 fol. 17891791. 



