A potter, who understood neither Latin nor Greek, was the first, 

 who, toward the end of the sixteenth century, dared to say at Paris, 

 and in the face of all the learned doctors, that fossil shells were real 

 shells, deposited formerly by the sea in the places where they were 

 then found ; that animals, and especially fishes, had given to the 

 figured stones all their diiferent figures; and he defied all the school 

 of Aristotle to attack his proofs. Histoire de V Academic des Sciences, 

 annee 1720, p. 5. 



FONTENELLE. 



This potter, who defied the school of Aristotle, was Bernard Pal- 

 issy, "as great a philosopher as Nature alone can produce;" as was 

 said by a writer of his own time, "a man of marvelously quick and 

 acute mind." 



FLOURENS. 



I have never had any other book than heaven and earth, which is 

 known to every one, and it is given to all to read this beautiful book. 



And because there are found stones filled with shells, even at the 

 summits of the highest mountains, you must not think that these 

 shells are formed, as every one says, by nature pleasing to do something 

 new. When I have closely examined the forms of stones, I find that 

 none of them could have taken the form of shells, or of any other 

 animal, if the animal itself had not constructed its form. We must 

 conclude that before these said shells were petrified, the fishes that 

 formed them were living in the water; and that both the water and 

 the fish were petrified at the same time, and of these there can be no 

 doubt. 



CEuvREs DE BERNARD PALISSY. 1575. 



There are shapes in the earth unfinished; things that are the forms 

 of life without ever having been the recipients of life. They are called 

 fossils. Opera Philosophica et Mineralogica. 1721. 



EMANUEL SWEDENBORO. 



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