ITALY 127 



from the hills, vegetation was complete, the trees as big as if they had 

 grown naturally. The earth, which cannot be fertile unless enriched 

 by animal and vegetable ingredients, contained these ingredients as 

 if it had been from all time. The petrifactions formed on mountains 

 do not prove that the world has undergone revolutions that would 

 require far more than six thousand years, because God, in creating it, 

 created it, petrifactions and all, such as it would have been if it had 

 really undergone these revolutions. 



' Here is certainly the most ingenious method ever invented for 

 reconciling the story of Moses with natural history. He thinks that 

 the only explanation of the prodigious disturbances of which con- 

 tinual evidence is found in the mountains is that the subterranean 

 fires have acted as mines and thrown them into the air, and that in 

 falling again they have been heaped up pell-mell in all sorts of irregular 

 situations. 



' Pere Boscovich then described in detail the construction of a clock 

 he had invented which is not subject to expansion by heat or con- 

 traction by cold. At this moment he was summoned to take a class, 

 and I think you won't be sorry, for all this astronomy must have 

 bored you greatly. . . . Up to this point, my dear Albertine, I have 

 told you frankly and honestly all I have done since my departure. 

 But now I have to confess an escapade which I have concealed so as 

 to save you anxiety ! You realise that I was very anxious to meet 

 Pere Spallanzani, the great observer of animalcules, the reproducer of 

 snails, salamanders, etc. I had hoped to find him at Milan ; not at 

 all he was at Pavia, where he is a Professor. Pere Frisi put it into 

 my head to go to Pavia ; he made it clear as day that this detour would 

 only lengthen my journey by twenty-four hours, and that by hiring 

 a carriage I could recover the time lost. As soon as it was made plain 

 to me my return would not be put off, I was soon persuaded, but the 

 trouble was to tell you, because had I done so you would have at once 

 believed that from place to place I should go on to Rome, and who 

 knows but that your tender anxiety would not have shortly made you 

 see your husband at Naples and next at Constantinople ! 



' Two hours after I got to Pavia seven leagues from Milan I 

 hastened to the Abbe Spallanzani, 1 who asked me to dinner. I had 

 immense pleasure in talking to him ; my unexpected arrival seemed to 

 be a joy and surprise to him, which flattered me greatly. He showed 

 me all his microscopes and his instruments and talked a great deal 



1 Spallanzani was chiefly celebrated as a physiologist. His discoveries in 

 the mode of reproduction of minute organisms proved the important fact that 

 animalcules cannot develop in infusions that have been boiled and kept sealed. 



